Extraction of embedded watermarks from a host content using a plurality of tentative watermarks

ABSTRACT

Methods, devices and computer program products facilitate the extraction of embedded watermarks in the presence of content distortions. Distortion of the content is estimated using two or more detected watermarks with an associated probability of false detection that is above a desired level. The estimated content distortion is used to obtain pre-distorted synchronization templates and to reevaluate the detected watermarks. The use of pre-distorted synchronization templates results in obtaining better estimations of content distortion, and improved reliability of watermark detections.

FIELD OF INVENTION

The present application generally relates to the field of contentmanagement. More particularly, the disclosed embodiments relate toembedding and extraction of watermarks from media content.

BACKGROUND

This section is intended to provide a background or context to thedisclosed embodiments that are recited in the claims. The descriptionherein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are notnecessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued.Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in thissection is not prior art to the description and claims in thisapplication and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in thissection.

Watermarks are substantially imperceptible signals embedded into a hostcontent. The host content may be any one of audio, still image, video orany other content that may be stored on a physical medium or transmittedor broadcast from one point to another. Watermarks are designed to carryauxiliary information without substantially affecting fidelity of thehost content, or without interfering with normal usage of the hostcontent. For this reason, watermarks are sometimes used to carry outcovert communications, where the emphasis is on hiding the very presenceof the hidden signals. In addition, other widespread applications ofwatermarks include prevention of unauthorized usage (e.g., duplication,playing and dissemination) of copyrighted multi-media content, proof ofownership, authentication, tampering detection, content integrityverification, broadcast monitoring, transaction tracking, audiencemeasurement, triggering of secondary activities such as interacting withsoftware programs or hardware components, communicating auxiliaryinformation about the content such as caption text, full title andartist name, or instructions on how to purchase the content, and thelike. The above list of applications is not intended to be exhaustive,as many other present and future systems can benefit from co-channeltransmission of main and auxiliary information.

Designing a watermarking system requires reaching the proper balancebetween transparency (imperceptibility) of embedded watermarks,robustness of embedded watermarks (i.e., the watermark's ability towithstand intentional and unintentional signal distortions) and securityrequirements of the system (i.e., the extent to which embeddedwatermarks can evade detection, deletion and/or manipulation byunauthorized parties). Such a balancing act must be carried out whilelimiting the average and/or maximum number of processing operations(i.e., the processing load) and memory usage below particular levelsthat are often imposed for practical software and/or hardwareimplementations of watermark embedder and/or a watermark extractor.

SUMMARY

This section is intended to provide a summary of certain exemplaryembodiments and is not intended to limit the scope of the embodimentsthat are disclosed in this application.

One aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a method thatincludes receiving a watermark frame comprising a synchronizationportion and a packet portion, the watermark frame having been obtainedfrom a content embedded with watermarks, comparing the receivedsynchronization portion to one or more pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates, and evaluating the received watermark frame based on at leastan outcome of the comparing.

In one example embodiment, the one or more pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates are generated, at least in part, by generating a plurality ofpilot contents, embedding the plurality of pilot contents withwatermarks comprising a synchronization portion, distorting theplurality of embedded pilot contents with one or more distortions, andobtaining candidate pre-distorted synchronization templates from theplurality of distorted pilot contents. In one example variation,generation of the one or more synchronization templates further includesreceiving a subset of the plurality of embedded pilot contents aftertransmission through a transmission medium, where the transmissionmedium introduces one or more distortions into the subset of theplurality of embedded pilot contents. Further, generation of the one ormore synchronization templates also includes comparing synchronizationportions of the received subset of the plurality of pilot contents witheach of the candidate pre-distorted synchronization templates, andselecting one or more candidate pre-distorted synchronization templatesthat match, to within a predefined tolerance, the synchronizationportions of the received subset of the plurality of pilot contents.

In one example embodiment, the comparing produces an error count foreach of the one or more pre-distorted synchronization templatesindicative of the number of mismatched symbols between the receivedsynchronization portion of the watermark frame and each of the one ormore pre-distorted synchronization templates. In another exampleembodiment, the comparing produces a correlation value for each of theone or more pre-distorted synchronization templates indicative of howwell the synchronization portion of the watermark frame matches each ofthe one or more pre-distorted synchronization templates.

According to another embodiment, the above noted method furtherincludes, subsequent to the comparing, identifying a pre-distortedsynchronization template that best matches the received synchronizationportion of the watermark frame, and selecting one or more distortiontypes and distortion amounts associated with the identifiedpre-distorted synchronization template to represent the distortion(s)present in the content. In one embodiment, the above noted methodfurther comprises organizing the candidate pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates in a pre-sorted order for each type of distortion and/orcombination of distortions. In such an embodiment, the pre-sorted orderranks a first candidate pre-distorted synchronization template with ahigher likelihood of representing a realistic content distortion higherthan a second candidate pre-distorted synchronization template with asmaller likelihood of representing a realistic content distortion.

In yet another embodiment, the one or more pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates correspond to a particular granularity of search over adistortion space. In one variation of the above embodiment, a number ofthe one or more pre-distorted synchronization templates is selected toreduce one or both of: a probability of false watermark detection,and/or computational resources needed for evaluating the receivedwatermark frame.

According to another embodiment, the evaluating produces an indicationof presence of one of: a tentative watermark representing a candidatewatermark with an associated probability of false watermark detectionthat exceeds a desired probability of false watermark detection, or aconclusive watermark representing a watermark detected with anassociated probability of false watermark detection that is smaller thanor equal to a desired probability of false watermark detection. Inanother embodiment, the evaluating identifies one or more distortiontypes and distortion amounts present in the content.

In another embodiment, the content comprises at least a first and asecond watermark message and the first watermark message has a smallerpayload than the second watermark message. In this embodiment,evaluating the received watermark frame results in detection of thefirst watermark message as a tentative watermark, and a contentdistortion estimate obtained for the tentative watermark is used toextract the second watermark message.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatcomprises a receiver configured to receive a watermark frame comprisinga synchronization portion and a packet portion, the watermark framehaving been obtained from a content embedded with watermarks. The devicealso includes a comparator configured to compare the receivedsynchronization portion to one or more pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates, and an evaluator configured to evaluate the receivedwatermark frame based on at least an outcome of the comparator.

Another embodiment relates to a device that includes a watermarkembedder configured to embed a plurality of pilot contents withwatermarks comprising a synchronization portion, a distortion processingcomponent configured to distort the plurality of embedded pilot contentswith one or more distortions, and a watermark extractor configured toproduce candidate pre-distorted synchronization templates from theplurality of distorted pilot contents. In one embodiment, such a devicefurther comprises a receiver configured to receive a subset of theplurality of embedded pilot contents after transmission through atransmission medium, wherein the transmission medium introduces one ormore distortions into the subset of the plurality of embedded pilotcontents, and a template matching components configured to comparesynchronization portions of the received subset of the plurality ofpilot contents with each of the candidate pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates and to select one or more candidate pre-distortedsynchronization templates that match, to within a predefined tolerance,the synchronization portions of the received subset of the plurality ofpilot contents.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatincludes a processor, and a memory comprising processor executable code.The processor executable code, when executed by the processor,configures the device to receive a watermark frame comprising asynchronization portion and a packet portion, the watermark frame havingbeen obtained from a content embedded with watermarks, compare thereceived synchronization portion to one or more pre-distortedsynchronization templates, and evaluate the received watermark framebased on at least an outcome of the comparing.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a computerprogram product, embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium,that comprises program code for receiving a watermark frame comprising asynchronization portion and a packet portion, the watermark frame havingbeen obtained from a content embedded with watermarks. The computerprogram product also includes program code for comparing the receivedsynchronization portion to one or more pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates and program code for evaluating the received watermark framebased on at least an outcome of the comparing.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a method thatincludes extracting a plurality of tentative watermarks from an embeddedhost content, where each tentative watermark represents a candidatewatermark with an associated probability of false watermark detectionthat exceeds a desired probability of false watermark detection. Thismethod also includes obtaining estimated distortion informationassociated with one or more distortions present in the embedded hostcontents using at least two of the extracted tentative watermarks, andbased on the estimated distortion information, obtaining one or morepre-distorted watermark templates. The method further includesre-evaluating at least one of the extracted tentative watermarks usingthe one or more pre-distorted watermark templates.

In one embodiment, the re-evaluating results in detection of a watermarkwith an improved probability of false watermark detection compared toprobability of false watermark detection associated with each of theextracted tentative watermarks. In another embodiment, the re-evaluatingresults in detection of a conclusive watermark with an associatedprobability of false watermark detection that is smaller than or equalto the desired probability of false watermark detection. In stillanother embodiment, each of the pre-distorted watermark templatesrepresents a particular type and a particular amount of at least onetype of distortion that can contaminate the embedded host content.According to another embodiment, the re-evaluating results in animproved estimation of distortions present in the embedded host content.

In one embodiment, the above noted method further includes, prior toobtaining one or more pre-distorted watermark templates, determiningwhether or not the estimated distortion information corresponds to adistortion amount that exceeds a particular distortion threshold. Inthis embodiment, the one or more pre-distorted watermark templates areobtained only if the estimated distortion information corresponds to adistortion amount that does not exceed the particular distortionthreshold.

In another embodiment, the estimated distortion information is obtainedusing two or more synchronization portions of the at least two extractedtentative watermarks. In this embodiment, the estimated distortioninformation is obtained by comparing a spacing between the at least twoof the extracted tentative watermarks to a nominal spacing of watermarksassociated with an un-distorted content. In yet another embodiment, theextracting of each of the tentative watermarks comprises detecting asynchronization portion of the tentative watermark that triggersextraction of a packet portion of the tentative watermark.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatincludes an extractor configured to extract a plurality of tentativewatermarks from an embedded host content, where each tentative watermarkrepresents a candidate watermark with an associated probability of falsewatermark detection that exceeds a desired probability of falsewatermark detection. Such a device also includes a distortion estimatorconfigured to obtain estimated distortion information associated withone or more distortions present in the embedded host contents using atleast two of the extracted tentative watermarks and to obtain one ormore pre-distorted watermark templates. This device further includes anevaluator configured to re-evaluate at least one of the extractedtentative watermarks using the one or more pre-distorted watermarktemplates.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatcomprises a processor and a memory that includes processor executablecode. The processor executable code, when executed by the processor,configures the device to extract a plurality of tentative watermarksfrom an embedded host content, where each tentative watermarkrepresenting a candidate watermark with an associated probability offalse watermark detection that exceeds a desired probability of falsewatermark detection. The processor executable code, when executed by theprocessor, also configures the device to obtain estimated distortioninformation associated with one or more distortions present in theembedded host contents using at least two of the extracted tentativewatermarks, and based on the estimated distortion information, to obtainone or more pre-distorted watermark templates. The processor executablecode, when executed by the processor, further configures the device tore-evaluate at least one of the extracted tentative watermarks using theone or more pre-distorted watermark templates.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a computerprogram product, embodied on a non-transitory computer readable mediumthat includes program code for extracting a plurality of tentativewatermarks from an embedded host content, where each tentative watermarkrepresenting a candidate watermark with an associated probability offalse watermark detection that exceeds a desired probability of falsewatermark detection. The computer program product also includes programcode for obtaining estimated distortion information associated with oneor more distortions present in the embedded host contents using at leasttwo of the extracted tentative watermarks, and program code for, basedon the estimated distortion information, obtaining one or morepre-distorted watermark templates. The computer program product furtherincludes program code for re-evaluating at least one of the extractedtentative watermarks using the one or more pre-distorted watermarktemplates.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a method thatincludes extracting a tentative watermark from an embedded host content,where the tentative watermark represents a candidate watermark with anassociated probability of false watermark detection that exceeds adesired probability of false watermark detection. This method alsoincludes obtaining estimated distortion information indicative of acoarse value of a particular distortion, or combination of distortions,present in the embedded host content using the extracted tentativewatermark and selecting one or more supplementary pre-distortedwatermark templates that correspond to one or more distortion values inthe vicinity of the coarse value. This method further includesre-evaluating the extracted tentative watermark using the selected oneor more supplementary pre-distorted watermark templates.

In one embodiment, obtaining the estimated distortion informationcomprises selecting a plurality of coarse pre-distorted watermarktemplates that correspond to a range of distortion values of aparticular distortion, or combination of distortions, with coarsegranularity, comparing the extracted tentative watermark to each of theplurality of coarse pre-distorted watermark templates, and obtaining theestimated distortion information by identifying a first coarsepre-distorted watermark template that best matches the extractedtentative watermark. In one variation of this embodiment, the pluralityof coarse pre-distorted watermark templates are selected at random fromamong a larger collection of pre-distorted watermark templates. Inanother variation of this embodiment, the plurality of coarsepre-distorted watermark templates are selected to correspond to one ormore types of distortions that are likely to be present in the embeddedhost content.

According to another embodiment, the one or more supplementarypre-distorted watermark templates are selected to enable a search ofdistortion space in the vicinity of the coarse value with a finegranularity. In still another embodiment, the re-evaluating results inan improved estimate of the distortions present in the embedded hostcontent. In one variation, the improved estimate is utilized to extractadditional watermarks from the embedded host content. In one embodiment,the re-evaluating results in detection of a watermark with an improvedprobability of false watermark detection compared to probability offalse watermark detection associated with the extracted tentativewatermark. In another embodiment, the re-evaluating results in detectionof a conclusive watermark with an associated probability of falsewatermark detection that is less than or equal to a desired probabilityof false watermark detection.

In another embodiment, the re-evaluating comprises comparing the one ormore supplementary pre-distorted watermark templates to the extractedtentative watermark, producing an error count associated with eachcomparison, where the error count representing how well thecorresponding supplementary pre-distorted watermark template matches theextracted tentative watermark, and selecting the supplementarypre-distorted watermark template that corresponds to smallest producederror count. In another embodiment, the one or more supplementarypre-distorted watermark templates are selected one-at-a-time in aniterative fashion.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatincludes an extractor configured to extract a tentative watermark froman embedded host content, where the tentative watermark represents acandidate watermark with an associated probability of false watermarkdetection that exceeds a desired probability of false watermarkdetection. This device further includes a distortion estimatorconfigured to obtain estimated distortion information indicative of acoarse value of a particular distortion, or combination of distortions,present in the embedded host content using the extracted tentativewatermark, and to select one or more supplementary pre-distortedwatermark templates that correspond to one or more distortion values inthe vicinity of the coarse value. This device additionally comprises anevaluator configured to re-evaluate the extracted tentative watermarkusing the selected one or more supplementary pre-distorted watermarktemplates.

According to another aspect of the disclosed embodiments, a device isprovided that includes a processor and a memory that includes processorexecutable code. The processor executable code, when executed by theprocessor, configures the device to extract a tentative watermark froman embedded host content, where the tentative watermark represents acandidate watermark with an associated probability of false watermarkdetection that exceeds a desired probability of false watermarkdetection. The processor executable code, when executed by theprocessor, also configures the device to obtain estimated distortioninformation indicative of a coarse value of a particular distortion, orcombination of distortions, present in the embedded host content usingthe extracted tentative watermark, and to select one or moresupplementary pre-distorted watermark templates that correspond to oneor more distortion values in the vicinity of the coarse value. Theprocessor executable code, when executed by the processor, furtherconfigures the device to re-evaluate the extracted tentative watermarkusing the selected one or more supplementary pre-distorted watermarktemplates.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a computerprogram product, embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium,that includes program code for extracting a tentative watermark from anembedded host content, where the tentative watermark represents acandidate watermark with an associated probability of false watermarkdetection that exceeds a desired probability of false watermarkdetection. The computer program product also includes program code forobtaining estimated distortion information indicative of a coarse valueof a particular distortion, or combination of distortions, present inthe embedded host content using the extracted tentative watermark, andprogram code for selecting one or more supplementary pre-distortedwatermark templates that correspond to one or more distortion values inthe vicinity of the coarse value. The computer program product furtherincludes program code for re-evaluating the extracted tentativewatermark using the selected one or more supplementary pre-distortedwatermark templates.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a method thatincludes extracting a tentative watermark from an embedded host content,where the tentative watermark represents a candidate watermark with anassociated probability of false watermark detection that exceeds adesired probability of false watermark detection. The method alsoincludes forming one or more extrapolated watermarks by obtainingsymbols of potential watermark frames that are positioned within theembedded host content at a predefined location relative to the extractedtentative watermark, and determining if the extrapolated watermarks,when collectively assessed with the detected tentative watermark,satisfy a desired probability of false watermark detection. In oneembodiment, the symbols of the potential watermark frames are positionedwithin the embedded host content at predefined temporal and/or spatiallocations relative to the extracted tentative watermark.

In another embodiment, determining if the extrapolated watermarkssatisfy a desired probability of false watermark detection comprisesdetermining a number of erroneous symbols in one or more of theextrapolated watermarks, assigning weights to the one or more of theextrapolated watermarks based, at least in-part, on the determinednumber of erroneous symbols, and determining if the weightedextrapolated watermark(s), when combined with the detected tentativewatermark, satisfy the desired probability of false watermark detection.In this embodiment, the number of erroneous symbols in each extrapolatedwatermark can be determined by one or more of: a comparison of theextrapolated watermark symbols to symbols of the extracted tentativewatermark, performing an error correction code decoding of theextrapolated watermark symbols, and/or a comparison of the extrapolatedwatermarks to one or more pre-distorted watermark templates.

In one embodiment, forming each of the extrapolated watermarks comprisesobtaining a number of erroneous symbols in one or more segments,assigning weights to each of the one or more segments based, at leastin-part, on the number of erroneous symbols in each of the one or moresegments, combining the assigned weights associated with the one or moresegments to produce one or more weighted extrapolated watermarksections, and determining if the weighted extrapolated watermarksections, when combined with the detected tentative watermark, satisfythe desired probability of false watermark detection. In thisembodiment, obtaining the number of erroneous symbols in each of the oneor more segments includes comparing the symbols of the potentialwatermark frame in each of the one or more segments to one or morepre-distorted watermark templates, and producing a count for each of theone or more segments representative of a number of mismatched symbolsbetween the symbols of the potential watermark frame in the one or moresegments and the one or more pre-distorted watermark templates.Moreover, in one variation of this embodiment, a number of segmentswithin the extrapolated watermark(s) is determined based on one or moreof: an extent of the extracted tentative watermark, an amount ofdistortion present in the embedded host content, and/or a type ofdistortion present in the embedded host content. In addition, in onevariation of this embodiment, the weight to a particular segment isassigned, at least in-part, based on an expected weight of anun-watermarked segment equal in length to the particular segment.According to another embodiment, an extent of each segment is determinedbased, at least in-part, on one or more of an amount of distortionexpected to be present in the embedded host content, and a type ofdistortion expected to be present in the embedded host content. Inanother embodiment, the determining as to whether the weightedextrapolated watermark sections, when combined with the detectedtentative watermark, satisfy the desired probability of false watermarkdetection is carried out for the one or more segments that collectivelyspan a smaller extent than the tentative watermark.

According to another embodiment, the desired probability of falsewatermark detection corresponds to detection of a conclusive watermark.In yet another embodiment, the above noted method further includesreporting an estimate of amount and type of distortion, or combinationof distortions, present in the embedded host content.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatincludes an extractor that is configured to extract a tentativewatermark from an embedded host content, where the tentative watermarkrepresents a candidate watermark with an associated probability of falsewatermark detection that exceeds a desired probability of falsewatermark detection. The device also includes a watermark extrapolatorconfigured to form one or more extrapolated watermarks by obtainingsymbols of potential watermark frames that are positioned within theembedded host content at a predefined location relative to the extractedtentative watermark, and an evaluator configured to determine if theextrapolated watermarks, when collectively assessed with the detectedtentative watermark, satisfy a desired probability of false watermarkdetection.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatincludes a processor and a memory that includes processor executablecode. The processor executable code, when executed by the processor,configures the device to extract a tentative watermark from an embeddedhost content, where the tentative watermark represents a candidatewatermark with an associated probability of false watermark detectionthat exceeds a desired probability of false watermark detection. Theprocessor executable code, when executed by the processor, alsoconfigures the device to form one or more extrapolated watermarks byobtaining symbols of potential watermark frames that are positionedwithin the embedded host content at a predefined location relative tothe extracted tentative watermark, and determine if the extrapolatedwatermarks, when collectively assessed with the detected tentativewatermark, satisfy a desired probability of false watermark detection.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a computerprogram product, embodied on a non-transitory computer readable mediumthat includes program code for extracting a tentative watermark from anembedded host content, where the tentative watermark represents acandidate watermark with an associated probability of false watermarkdetection that exceeds a desired probability of false watermarkdetection. The computer program product also includes program code forforming one or more extrapolated watermarks by obtaining symbols ofpotential watermark frames that are positioned within the embedded hostcontent at a predefined location relative to the extracted tentativewatermark, and program code for determining if the extrapolatedwatermarks, when collectively assessed with the detected tentativewatermark, satisfy a desired probability of false watermark detection.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a method thatcomprises extracting a potential watermark frame from a content embeddedwith one or more watermarks, where each embedded watermark comprises aplurality of symbols that form a watermark frame, dividing the watermarkframe into a plurality of segments, wherein each of the plurality ofsegments comprises two of more watermark symbols, assigning weights toeach segment, combining the assigned weights associated with two or moresegments to produce one or more weighted partial or full watermarkframes, and determining if the one or more weighted full or partialwatermark frames satisfy a desired probability of false watermarkdetection.

In one embodiment, an extent of each segment is selected in accordancewith a type of error present in the content. In another embodiment, theweight to a particular segment is assigned, at least in-part, based onexpected weight of an un-watermarked segment equal in length to theparticular segment.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a devicecomprising an extractor configured to extract a potential watermarkframe from a content embedded with one or more watermarks, where eachembedded watermark comprises a plurality of symbols that form awatermark frame. The device also includes an evaluator that isconfigured to divide the watermark frame into a plurality of segments,wherein each of the plurality of segments comprises two of morewatermark symbols, assign weights to each segment, combine the assignedweights associated with two or more segments to produce one or moreweighted partial or full watermark frames, and to determine if the oneor more weighted full or partial watermark frames satisfy a desiredprobability of false watermark detection.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a device thatincludes a processor and a memory that includes processor executablecode. The processor executable code, when executed by the processor,configures the device to extract a potential watermark frame from acontent embedded with one or more watermarks, where each embeddedwatermark comprises a plurality of symbols that form a watermark frame,divide the watermark frame into a plurality of segments, wherein each ofthe plurality of segments comprises two of more watermark symbols,assign weights to each segment, combine the assigned weights associatedwith two or more segments to produce one or more weighted partial orfull watermark frames, and determine if the one or more weighted full orpartial watermark frames satisfy a desired probability of falsewatermark detection.

Another aspect of the disclosed embodiments relates to a computerprogram product, embodied on a non-transitory computer readable mediumthat includes program code for extracting a potential watermark framefrom a content embedded with one or more watermarks, where each embeddedwatermark comprises a plurality of symbols that form a watermark frame,program code for dividing the watermark frame into a plurality ofsegments, wherein each of the plurality of segments comprises two ofmore watermark symbols, program code for assigning weights to eachsegment, program code for combining the assigned weights associated withtwo or more segments to produce one or more weighted partial or fullwatermark frames, and program code for determining if the one or moreweighted full or partial watermark frames satisfy a desired probabilityof false watermark detection

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a watermarking system that can accommodatethe disclosed embodiments.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a watermark extractor device that canaccommodate the disclosed embodiments.

FIG. 3A shows an example watermark frame with synchronization (SYNCH)and PACKET portions.

FIG. 3B illustrates example PACKET assembly attempts after successfuland unsuccessful assembly of SYNCH portions of watermark frames.

FIG. 3C illustrates PACKET assembly operations using pre-distorted SYNCHtemplates in accordance with an exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 4 shows pre-distorted SYNCH templates in accordance with anexemplary embodiment.

FIG. 5 illustrates a set of operations that are carried out inaccordance with an exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of certain components that can be used tocarry out some or all of the operations of FIG. 5 in accordance with anexemplary embodiment.

FIG. 7 illustrates a set of operations that can be carried out togenerate a set of pre-distorted watermark templates in accordance withan exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of certain components that can be used tocarry out some or all of the operations of FIG. 7.

FIG. 9 illustrates a set of operations that can be carried out tofacilitate extraction of embedded watermarks in accordance with anexemplary embodiment.

FIG. 10 illustrates a set of operations that can be carried out toextract embedded watermarks from a distorted content in accordance withan exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 11A shows an example watermark frame with synchronization (SYNCH)and PACKET portions.

FIG. 11B illustrates example PACKET assembly attempt after successfuland unsuccessful assembly of SYNCH portions of watermark frames.

FIG. 11C illustrates a PACKET assembly operation that follows thedetection of a tentative watermark in accordance with an exemplaryembodiment.

FIG. 11D illustrates a PACKET assembly operation that follows thedetection of a tentative watermark and uses watermark segments inaccordance with an exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 12 illustrates exemplary plots of the probability of falsewatermark detection versus the watermark weight threshold that comparesindependent watermark search with sparse granularity search and finegranularity search in accordance with an exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 13 illustrates a set of operations 1300 that can be carried out toextrapolate watermarks on a segment-by-segment basis in accordance withan exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 14 is a block diagram of certain components that can be used tocarry out some or all of the operations of FIG. 13 and or FIG. 18 inaccordance with exemplary embodiments.

FIG. 15 shows a plot of the expected weight of an un-watermarked segmentin accordance with an exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 16 illustrates a simplified diagram of a device within whichvarious disclosed embodiments may be implemented.

FIG. 17 illustrates SYNCH assembly and pre-distorted SYNCH templateoperations in accordance with exemplary embodiments.

FIG. 18 illustrates a set of operations that can be carried out toextrapolate watermarks in accordance with an exemplary embodiment

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF CERTAIN EMBODIMENTS

In the following description, for purposes of explanation and notlimitation, details and descriptions are set forth in order to provide athorough understanding of the disclosed embodiments. However, it will beapparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may bepracticed in other embodiments that depart from these details anddescriptions.

Additionally, in the subject description, the word “exemplary” is usedto mean serving as an example, instance, or illustration. Any embodimentor design described herein as “exemplary” is not necessarily to beconstrued as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments ordesigns. Rather, use of the word exemplary is intended to presentconcepts in a concrete manner.

Watermarks can be embedded into a host content using a variety ofwatermark embedding techniques by, for example, manipulating the leastsignificant bits of the host signal in time or frequency domains,insertion of watermarks with an independent carrier signal using spreadspectrum, phase, amplitude or frequency modulation techniques, andinsertion of watermarks using a host-dependent carrier signal such asfeature modulation and informed-embedding techniques. Most embeddingtechniques utilize psycho-visual or psycho-acoustical (or both) analysisof the host content to determine optimal locations and amplitudes forthe insertion of watermarks. This analysis typically identifies thedegree to which the host signal can hide or mask the embedded watermarksas perceived by humans.

An embedded host content is often stored and/or transmitted to anotherlocation using a variety of storage and/or transmission channels. Thesechannels are characterized by inherent noise and distortions, such aserrors due to scratches and fingerprints that contaminate data onoptical media, noise in over-the-air broadcasts of audio-visual content,packet drops in streaming of multi-media content over the Internet orfrom a media server, and the like. Additional impairments that canaffect fidelity of the embedded watermarks may be due to various signalprocessing operations that are typically performed on multimedia contentsuch as lossy compression, scaling, rotation, analog-to-digitalconversion and the like. In most digital watermarking applications, theembedded watermarks must be able to maintain their integrity under suchnoise and distortion conditions.

The security of embedded watermarks is another aspect of watermarkingsystems. In certain applications, such as proof of ownership, sourceauthentication, piracy tracing, access control of copyrighted content,it is essential that embedded watermarks resist intentionalmanipulations aimed at detecting the presence of watermarks, decipheringthe data carried by those watermarks, modifying or inserting illegalvalues (forgery), and/or removing the embedded watermarks.

Another consideration in designing a watermarking system is thewatermark payload capacity. This requirement depends on the specificapplication of the watermarking system. Typical applications range fromrequiring the detection of only the presence of the watermarks (i.e.,requiring single-state watermarks) to requiring a few tens of bits ofauxiliary information per second. In the latter case, the embedded bitsmay be used to carry identification and timing information such asserial numbers and timestamps, metadata, such as captions, artist names,purchasing information, etc.

Another factor in designing practical watermarking systems iscomputational costs of the embedding and/or extraction units. Thisfactor becomes increasingly important for consumer electronic devices orsoftware utilities that must be implemented with a limited silicon realestate or computational requirements. This factor can be stronglyrelated to the intended use of the watermarking systems. For example,watermarks for forensic tracing of piracy channels, such as those thatembed different codes in each copy of content distributed over Internet,require a simple embedder and may tolerate a complex and costly forensicextractor. On the other hand, copy-control systems designed to preventunauthorized access to multi-media content in consumer electronicdevices, for example, may tolerate a sophisticated embedder but requirea simple and efficient extractor.

Yet another important factor in designing a watermarking system is theprobability of false watermark detections. A false watermark can beproduced when a watermark is detected from an unmarked content, or maybe due to the detection of a watermark value that is different from theoriginally embedded watermark value. The desired levels of falsewatermark detection can also vary depending on the intended applicationof the watermarking system. For example, in copy-control applications,the probability of false detections must be very low (e.g., in the orderof 10⁻¹²) since executing a restrictive action (e.g., stopping theplayback of the content) due to a false watermark detection on a legallypurchased content is bound to frustrate users and have negativeimplications for device manufacturers and/or content providers. On theother hand, for broadcast monitoring applications that, for example,track the number of times that a feature song has been broadcast inorder to generate a royalty payments or popularity charts, a relativelyhigher false detection rate (e.g., in the order of 10⁻⁶) may betolerated since the presence of a few false detections may have verylittle effect on the final outcome of the counts.

Another important factor that impacts the overall performance of thewatermarking system is the selection of a particular technology forwatermark embedding and extraction. Making an optimum tradeoff betweenthe above noted requirements, in view of the particular application athand, is a very challenging task.

The disclosed embodiments significantly improve the embedding andextraction of watermarks while balancing various system requirementsincluding, watermark transparency, robustness, false positive detection,security, payload capacity and processing load. In some embodiments,watermark extraction is based on tentative watermark detection as anintermediate step toward conclusive watermark extraction.

The following conventions may be used to facilitate the understanding ofthe concepts that relate to the disclosed embodiments. However, it isunderstood that a watermarking system that can accommodate theembodiments of the present application can be represented using othernotations and representations. A watermarking system can be described bya tuple {O, W, K, E_(K), D_(K), C_(T)}, where O is a set of all originalhost content (i.e., one or more host contents with no embeddedwatermarks), W is a set of all watermarks, K is set of all stego keys,E_(K) is an embedding operation, D_(K) is an extraction operation andC_(T) is a comparison operation. The embedding operation, E_(K), and theextraction operation, D_(K), can be represented by Equations (1) and(2), respectively.E _(K) :O×W×K→O _(w)  (1).D _(K) :O _(w) ×K→W′  (2).

In Equations (1) and (2), O_(w) is the set of embedded content and W′ isthe set of candidate watermarks that are extracted from the set ofembedded content, O_(w). The comparison operation, C_(T), which isrepresented by Equation (3), compares the extracted watermark, W′,against the set of all watermarks, W.C _(T) :

W′,W

→{0,1}  (3).

It should be noted that in some embodiments, the comparison may becarried out not for all watermarks, but rather for a subset of allwatermarks. For example, such a subset can include watermarks with aparticular range of values, watermarks that are used for embedding aparticular type of content, etc. Upon obtaining a successful matchbetween W′ and W, the comparison operation produces a first value (e.g.,a “1”) and upon an unsuccessful match comparison operation produces asecond value (e.g., a “0”).

FIG. 1 shows a simplified block diagram of a watermarking system 100 inaccordance with an exemplary embodiment. The inputs to the watermarkembedder 104 are the original host content 102, c_(o), and the watermark110, W. The watermark 110 is generated by the watermark design module108 that uses the embedding stego key 106, K, and the original hostcontent 102. The generated watermark 110 is embedded into the hostcontent 102 to produce the embedded host content 112, c_(w). Theproduction of the embedded host content 112 by the embedding operation,E_(K), can be represented by Equation (4) below.c _(W) =E _(k)(c _(O) ,W)  (4).

The embedded host content 112 is stored and/or transmitted using one ormore transmission/storage media 114. The transmission/storage media 114may be a unidirectional or a bidirectional transmission media. Inembodiments that utilize a bidirectional transmission channel,information from the watermark extractors may flow back to the embeddingcomponents of the watermarking system 100. Such feedback may include,but is not limited to, transmissions of identification, authenticationand/or authorization information, indications as to the success orfailure of watermark extraction operations, reporting of variousstatistics related to the extractor operation, etc.

Referring back to FIG. 1, the content that is transmitted through thetransmission/storage media 114 may include distortions that are due toinherent transmission/storage media 114 and/or are the result ofintentional attacks on the embedded host content 112. Such a modifiedembedded host content 116, c′_(w), is input to the watermark extractor118, which uses an extraction stego key 120, K, and possibly theoriginal host content 102 to produce one or more candidate watermarks122, W′. The generation of the candidate watermarks 122 that is carriedout by the extraction operation, D_(K), can be represented by Equation(5) below.W′=D _(K)(c′ _(w) ,c _(O))  (5).

Note that many watermark detectors do not need the original host content102 in order to extract the embedded watermarks, and therefore, in thosescenarios (commonly known as blind detection), the dependence of theextraction operation, D_(K), on the original host content 102 inEquation (5) can be dropped. It should be further noted that, in someembodiments, the embedding stego key 106 is the same as the extractionstego key 120. However, in other embodiments, the embedding stego key106 is different from the extraction stego key 120.

The candidate watermark 122 differs in general from the watermark 110selected for embedding either due to possible content manipulations ordue to an imperfect embedding process. The candidate watermark 122 iscompared to one or more possible watermarks 126, W_(i), by thecomparator 124. The comparator produces a watermark detector output 128that is indicative as to whether or not a match between the candidatewatermark 122 and one of possible watermarks 126 is produced. Thewatermark detector output 128 can, for example, be produced according toEquation (3). The watermark detector output 128 can further include anindication as to the value, state and/or pattern of the detectedwatermark. It should be noted that the comparator 124 of FIG. 1 onlyillustrates an exemplary mechanism for assessing whether or not acandidate watermark W′ indeed represents a true watermark in thecontent. Other exemplary techniques for assessing the presence and/orvalue of a watermark include, but are not limited to, using errordetection and/or error correction codes. For instance, a candidatewatermark W′ that is error correction code (ECC)-encoded, can be decodedto ascertain whether or not an error-free watermark packet can berecovered and/or to obtain the number of errors that contaminate aparticular watermark packet.

The watermark detector output 128 is generated in view of a desiredprobability of false watermark extractions, P_(f). False watermarkdetections may occur in two different ways. First, for any watermarkextraction system, there is a small, but finite, probability of falselydetecting a watermark in an un-watermarked content (also sometimesrefereed to as a false positive detection). Secure digital musicinitiative (SDMI) and DVD-audio requirements, for example, specify afalse positive watermark detection probability of less than 10⁻¹² per15-second detection interval. This means that the average time betweenfalse positive watermark detections must be 476 thousand years ofcontinuous monitoring of un-watermarked content. A second type of falsedetection occurs when a watermarked content is being examined and awatermark value is detected that is different from the originallyembedded watermark value. This type of false detection, normally calleda misdetection, can produce unwanted outcomes. For example, amisdetection can potentially result in the detection of a “no playbackallowed” watermark instead of a “no copy allowed” watermark and,therefore, cause the playback of a legitimately purchased content to behalted. For a properly designed watermarking system, the rate ofmisdetections should be roughly the same order of magnitude as the rateof false positive detections described above.

In some systems, a threshold, T, is used to determine the output of thecomparison operation that is represented by Equation (3). That is, thecomparator output can be represented by Equation (6) below.

$\begin{matrix}{{C_{T}\left( {W^{\prime},W} \right)} = \left\{ \begin{matrix}{1,} & {m > T} \\{0,} & {{m \leq T},}\end{matrix} \right.} & (6)\end{matrix}$

In Equation (6), m is the comparison result (and/or a correlation value)such that the probability of false watermark detection, P_(f),monotonically decreases as m increases.

The comparator operation and computation of false watermark detectionprobability depend on the selected watermarking algorithm. For example,many spread spectrum-based watermarking algorithms use the correlationmeasure between W′ and W as the comparison measure, m. In particular,the correlation coefficient, m, between the candidate watermark, W′, andthe pseudo-random pattern that is used in embedding a watermark, W, isestimated. Next if the estimated correlation coefficient, m, is greaterthan a particular threshold, T, a successful watermark extraction isreported. In the case of unmarked content, the correlation coefficientcalculated between the extracted false watermark pattern and the longpseudo-random pattern follows approximately a normal distribution, whichmeans the probability of false watermark detection, P_(f), can becalculated using the well-known error function. As the correlationcoefficient, m, increases, the probability of false watermark detection,P_(f), monotonically decreases. Therefore, the threshold, T, hasone-to-one mapping with P_(f).

Alternatively, candidate watermarks can also be extracted as a string ofbits and then the number of bit errors, e, can be calculated using errordetection/correction codes or direct pattern matching to bit patterns ofpotential watermarks. The probability of false watermark detection,P_(f), can then be calculated using Binomial distribution. For example,if the watermark is N bits long and the number of bit errors is lessthan or equal to e, then the probability of false detections can becomputed using Equation (7).

$\begin{matrix}{{P_{f}\left( {N,e} \right)} = {2^{- N}{\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{e}{\begin{pmatrix}N \\j\end{pmatrix}.}}}} & (7)\end{matrix}$

If the watermark consists of N=64 bits, and detector finds only e=5 biterrors, then the probability of false watermark detection, P_(f), isless than 10⁻¹². This P_(f) condition is typically sufficient forconclusive watermark extraction and, for example, outright copyrightenforcement. The probability of false watermark detection, P_(f), thatis obtained from Equation (7) monotonically decreases as the number ofbits that match, m (i.e., N−e), increases.

The above described comparison operations produce only two results. In afirst outcome, the watermark is extracted and reported, e.g., to enforcea copyright rule. This outcome is sometimes referred to as the detectionof a strong watermark. In a second outcome, the watermark is not foundand no further action is commenced. In addition to the aforementionedconclusive watermark detections and no detection of watermarks, a thirdoutcome of the comparison process can be established that designates thedetection of a “tentative” watermark. For example, the third outcome candesignate extraction scenarios where the comparison produces a value(e.g., number of bits with error, e) that is greater than or equal tothe threshold, T, for a strong watermark detection but less than anotherthreshold, t. The three outputs of the comparison operation may berepresented by Equation (8) below.

$\begin{matrix}{{C_{T,t}\left( {w^{\prime},w} \right)} = \left\{ \begin{matrix}{1,} & {e < T} \\{0.5,} & {T \leq e < t} \\{0,} & {e \geq {t.}}\end{matrix} \right.} & (8)\end{matrix}$

Let us consider again the case where the watermark consists of a stringof bits and the comparator output count consists of the number of biterrors. In the above example, finding up to 5 errors in the 64-bit longstring may be sufficient for a conclusive watermark extraction. However,if detector finds 20 bit errors, the probability of false watermarkdetection is less than 0.2%, which makes the watermark presence likely,but not certain enough to warrant its use outside of the extractor.Therefore, any error count more than 5 (i.e., T=6) but less than 21(i.e., t=21) can be used to signal a tentative watermark detection. Ifthe error count is greater than or equal to 21 errors, then theprobability of false watermark detection is greater than 0.2% and,therefore, the watermark may be ignored.

FIG. 2 shows a simplified block diagram of a watermark extractor device200 that can accommodate the disclosed embodiments. The watermarkextractor device 200 may be a stand-alone device or may be incorporatedas a component of a larger content handling device, such as a contentplayback device, a content relay device, a content recording device, aset top box, and the like. The incoming modified embedded content 202 isreceived at a receiver 204. The receiver 204 is depicted in FIG. 2 asbeing a separate component within the watermark extractor device 200.However, it is understood that the receiver 204 may be a componentwithin a different subsystem of a larger media handling device, or maybe incorporated as part of one another component within the watermarkextractor device 200. As the modified embedded content 202 may be in avariety of formats and may comprise several audio, video, multimedia, ordata signals, it may be necessary for the receiver 204 to appropriatelycondition the modified embedded content 202 into the proper form that isrecognizable by other components of the watermark extractor device 200.The conditioning may comprise signal processing operations, such asdemodulation, decompression, de-interleaving, decryption, descrambling,re-sampling, A/D conversion, reformatting, filtering, and the like.

A stego key selection component 208 then selects at least one stego keyfrom a collection of stego keys that are used by the watermarkextraction engine 206 to extract the embedded watermarks. In someembodiments, the stego keys are stored in a stego key storage component210. Watermark extraction results 216 are produced by the watermarkextraction engine 206. The watermark extraction results 216 can indicatethe presence and/or value of the recovered watermark(s), as well asindications of reliability of the recovered watermarks and otherinformation. The watermark extraction results 216 may be reported (e.g.,to a particular user or device) at pre-determined time intervals. Insome embodiments, distortion estimation components 212 produceestimations of type and amount of one or more distortions that may bepresent in the received content. The estimated distortion informationcan be used by the watermark extraction engine 206 to facilitate thedetection of embedded watermarks in the presence of content distortions.Estimated distortion information can also be communicated to evaluatorcomponents 214 that facilitate the detection of embedded watermarks byevaluating watermark frames that are being processed by the watermarkextraction engine 206. In some embodiments, the evaluator components 214can perform operations such as assigning weights to extracted potentialwatermarks or watermark segments, combining the assigned weights,evaluating if the extracted watermarks, or accumulated watermarksegments satisfy a desired probability of false watermark detection, andthe like. In some embodiments, the watermark extraction results 216 canbe outputted by the evaluator components 214 rather than the watermarkextraction engine 206. The distortion estimation components 212, theevaluator components 214 and the watermark extraction engine 206 can bein communication with storage 218 (e.g., a database) that containspre-distorted watermark templates and other information. Pre-distortedwatermark templates will be discussed in detail in the sections thatfollow. The storage 218 may be the same or different physical storageunit as the stego key storage components 210. It should be noted that tofacilitate the understanding of underlying concepts, FIG. 2 illustratesseparate components within the watermark extractor device 200. However,it is understood that in some implementations, two or more of thedepicted components may be combined together. For example, in someimplementations, one or more of the distortion estimation components212, the evaluator components 214 and the storage 218 may beincorporated as part of the watermark extraction engine 206.

In some applications, if the watermark extraction results 216 areindicative of detection of at least one conclusive watermark, furtherenforcement actions (such as stoppage of content playback, stoppage ofcontent recording, display of a warning message, etc.) can be carriedout outside the watermark extractor device 200. If the watermarkextraction results 216 are indicative of detection of at least onetentative watermark, the usage of the extracted tentative watermarks canbe limited to within the watermark extractor device 200 to, for example,initiate various adjustments to the detector operation. As notedearlier, a tentative watermark can be detected based on a threshold,which depends on the tentative watermark usage, as well as on thedesired tradeoffs between processing load and robustness gains.

Many intentional attacks on digital watermarks, or even regular contentprocessing operations, result in watermark distortions that change thewatermark position, size, orientation and other parameters. For example,camcordering of a movie that is being displayed on a screen may resultin picture rotation, cropping in time or space domains, picturestretching, perspective modification, etc. Similarly, audio watermarksmay be exposed to time shifts (e.g. due to audio cropping orconcatenating with other audio), time scaling, pitch shifts, wow andflutter, etc. Most of those distortions can be compensated by detectingand inverting the content distortion prior to watermark extraction.Alternatively, in some embodiments, the effects of such distortions maybe fully or partially mitigated by adjusting the watermark searchprocess to correlate extracted candidate watermarks to the pre-distortedwatermark templates.

The distortion detection and compensation can be manual or automatic,and it can be achieved with or without the original content at thedetector. Clearly, the most desirable approach is to provide automaticdistortion detection without using the original content in order tosimplify the watermark detection process. Typically this can be achievedby introducing synchronization (or registration) watermarks.

FIG. 3A shows an example watermark frame of length L that includes asynchronization portion (SYNCH) and packets portion (PACKET). In theexemplary diagram of FIG. 3A, for simplicity, a one-dimensional view ofa watermark frame (e.g., corresponding to an audio content) is depicted.It is, however, understood that similar principles are applicable towatermarks have two or more dimensions (such as watermarks that areembedded in images, video sequences, and the like). The synchronizationand packet portions of a watermark frame each can comprise a pluralityof symbols (i.e., binary or non-binary symbols). In some embodiments,the synchronization portion of a watermark frame can be a particularpattern or sequence that is embedded in a host content. As such, thesynchronization portion of a watermark frame is sometime referred to asa synchronization watermark, a synchronization pattern, asynchronization marker, a synchronization sequence and the like. One ofthe functions of the synchronization portion is to assist in locating awatermark frame within a host content. For example, a watermarkextractor may search a content (e.g., process the samples of a content)to find a known synchronization pattern that marks the beginning of awatermark frame. Upon successful detection of the synchronizationportion, the watermark extractor may then attempt recovering thewatermark packet symbols that follow the synchronization portion. Insome embodiments, detection of a synchronization pattern signals thestart of a watermark frame with coarse granularity, which can furthertrigger additional processing at fine granularity to increase thereliability of watermark detection. In some systems, a watermark framemay contain two or more synchronization portions that are used to, forexample, establish the location of a watermark frame with differentlevels of granularity, and/or to signal the beginning, end and/or othersections of a watermark frame.

In an example extraction operation workflow, following a successfulassembly and detection of the SYNCH, the PACKET is assembled. However,when significant amount of distortion is present in the content, it maybe hard or impossible to detect the SYNCH. FIG. 3B shows that PACKET #1is assembled after successful detection of the SYNCH portion that marksthe beginning of PACKET #1. However, PACKETS #2 and #3 are not assembleddue to distortion to the SYNCH portion that precedes each of the PACKETS#2 and #3. To further illustrate the extraction of watermarks, let usconsider an application where an audio content is embedded withwatermarks and is subsequently linearly compressed in time (e.g., withassociated pitch shift up) due to an intentional or unintentionalcontent processing operation. Depending on the particular watermarkembedding technology, the SYNCH portions of the embedded watermarkframes may be able to tolerate certain amount of time scaling beforetheir detection fails. In some scenarios that the content has beensubjected to linear time scaling, if the amount of time scaling can beestimated, the immunity to time scaling can be improved by scaling thecontent in the opposite direction before attempting to extract the SYNCHpatterns. This way, the audio time-scale compression is inverted (i.e.,compensated) and the watermark detection becomes feasible for a largerrange of compression impairments.

In another embodiment, instead of modifying the time-scaled (orotherwise impaired) content, one or more pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates (e.g., time-compressed synchronization templates) aregenerated and used to detect the embedded synchronization patternswithout changing the content itself. As noted earlier, SYNCH patternsare used to establish the location of the watermark frames. SYNCHtemplates are pre-definded SYNCH patterns that are formed to facilitatethe detection of a SYNCH pattern that is embedded in a content.According to some embodiments, the SYNCH detection process includesprocessing the received content to obtain a candidate SYNCH pattern andthen comparing the candidate SYNCH pattern to one or more SYNCHtemplates that can include a plurality of pre-distorted SYNCH templates.Analytical and empirical results indicate that generating a set ofpre-distorted SYNCH templates provides as much reliability of watermarkdetection as scaling the content, but at a lower processing cost.

In order to facilitate the understanding of the disclosed embodiment, itis instructive to consider an example where a SYNCH pattern comprises asequence of 50 bits that are embedded in sequential sections of an audiocontent using a particular embedding algorithm. Let us further assumethat each bit of the SYNCH pattern spans 1 second of the host audiocontent. For an audio content with 44,100 samples per second, each bitof the SYNCH pattern is embedded over 44,100 samples of the content. Onemethod of detecting the SYNCH pattern from a received content is to (1)collect 44,100 samples of the received content, (2) process the samplesto extract a candidate bit value, (3) repeat steps (1) and (2) 49 timesto form a 50-bit candidate SYNCH pattern and (4) compare the candidateSYNCH pattern to one or more SYNCH templates to ascertain if thecandidate SYNCH pattern indeed corresponds to a true SYNCH pattern witha particular confidence level.

Since the location of a SYNCH pattern within a content is not known,steps (1) through (4) may need to be repeated in a sliding-windowfashion, where in each iteration of steps (1) through (4) the processedsamples of the received audio content overlap with the previousiteration. In an extreme case, steps (1) through (4) can be repeated44,100 times to produce a pool of 44,100 candidate SYNCH patterns with aone-sample search granularity. In most practical applications, however,such an extreme approach is neither computationally feasible, nornecessary for detecting embedded SYNCH patterns with reasonablereliability. Therefore, steps (1) through (4) are often repeated a fewtimes for each watermark bit duration. This is sometimes referred assearching the content with X sub-bit granularity, where X represents thenumber of times steps (1) through (4)—or at least steps (1) and (2)—arerepeated for each bit duration. In some embodiments, the detectionprocess may start with a coarse sub-bit granularity (e.g., 3 sub-bits)and, once a potential SYNCH pattern is detected, the search is repeatedor resumed at a higher sub-bit granularity.

In the absence of content distortions, the above noted SYNCH detectionprocedure can be carried out by assembling candidate SYNCH pattern bitvalues that are spaced apart at a nominal distance from one another.FIG. 17 is a simplified diagram of SYNCH assembly and/or templategeneration that can be carried out in accordance with an exemplaryembodiment. The sub-bit pool, as noted earlier, represents candidate bitvalues that are produced at sub-bit granularity. The nominal templateselection operation in the exemplary diagram of FIG. 17 includesselecting every fifth sub-bit (or more generally sub-bits that are d0apart). In the above example, where the SYNCH pattern is a 50-bitsequence, 50 such sub-bits are selected to form a candidate SYNCHpattern. The candidate SYNCH pattern is then compared to a nominal (orundistorted) SYNCH template to determine how well they match (e.g., howmany mis-matched bits are detected).

In the presence of a distortion, such as a time scaling distortion,candidate SYNCH patterns may be formed by selecting sub-bits at aspacing that differs from the nominal spacing. Referring to FIG. 17, thesub-bits may be selected at a distance d1 for a first type of distortion(e.g., time expansion), and at a distance d2 for a second type ofdistortion (e.g., time contraction). In some scenarios, the candidateSYNCH patterns that are obtained based on different sub-bit spacings arecompared to the nominal SYNCH template to assess how well they match.

In some embodiments, instead of matching the candidate SYNCH patterns tothe nominal SYNCH template, the candidate SYNCH patterns are compared toone or more pre-distorted SYNCH templates that can differ from thenominal SYNCH template. Such pre-distorted SYNCH templates can beobtained by embedding a content (or a variety of contents) with a SYNCHpattern, subjecting the content(s) to various distortions, andextracting the SYNCH patterns from the distorted content at nominaland/or modified sub-bit spacing. For example, with reference to FIG. 17,pre-distorted template #1 of length N (e.g., N=50) may be obtained byselecting N sub-bits with d1 spacing, whereas pre-distorted template #2of length N may be obtained by selecting N sub-bits with d2 spacing. Theselection of pre-distorted templates based on different sub-bit spacingis most effective for scaling-type distortions. For some distortions(e.g., acoustic propagation, intensity/amplitude modulation, camcordercapture, etc.), the pre-distorted templates can be obtained by selectingthe sub-bits at the nominal spacing, d0.

Generally, many dimensions of distortion space can be explored usingpre-distorted SYNCH templates. FIG. 4 shows an example where an original(or nominal) SYNCH template 402 (i.e., the SYNCH template in the absenceof content distortions) is passed through various potential distortionsA through K 404, 406, 408, 410 to generate a set of pre-distorted SYNCHtemplates A through K 414, 416, 418, 420. FIG. 4 also depicts theundistorted SYNCH template 412 which may be stored along with thepre-distorted SYNCH templates A through K 414, 416, 418, 420.Pre-distortion of templates is applicable to contents that are modifiedin one or more dimensions in frequency/time/space/amplitude domains,including linear or nonlinear scaling (warping) and rotation. Anon-exhaustive list of distortions that may affect watermarks that areinserted into images include image rotation, stretching in vertical orhorizontal dimensions, dynamic range compression of luminance signal,color balance, etc. A non-exhaustive list of impairments that may affectwatermarks that are inserted into audio content includes linear timescaling, pitch-invariant time scaling, time-invariant pitch scaling,dynamic range compression, equalization and re-sampling.

It should be noted that the above discussion regarding SYNCH patternscan be readily expanded to include watermark packets. Moreover, thedisclosed principles can extended to include SYNCH or PACKETS that areembedded in two or more dimensions, in spatial, temporal and/orfrequency domains. Such SYNCH or PACKETS may be represented by binary ornon-binary symbols, and their detection may be based on binary ornon-binary symbols and/or parameters. For example, the SYNCH portion ofan embedded watermark may be generally described as a predefined signalpattern which can be extracted using a correlation process.

FIG. 3C illustrates similar PACKET assembly operations for the samepacket that was shown in FIG. 3B, but the operation in FIG. 3C utilizespre-distorted SYNCH templates to enable successful detection of theembedded SYNCH in the presence of content distortion. The amount ofprocessing and the probability of false watermark detections depend onthe number of pre-distorted templates, K, that are used for detectingthe embedded synchronization patterns. The number of pre-distortedtemplates, K, depends on the range and granularity of distortions thatneed to be accommodated, as well as to the watermark technologysensitivity to particular distortions. For example, spreadspectrum-based watermark technologies are generally more sensitive totime scaling distortions than technologies that are based on replicamodulation. Therefore, spread spectrum-based technologies require manymore pre-distorted templates to effectively detect watermarks in thepresence of time-scaling distortions when compared to replica modulationtechniques.

Consider a scenario where an audio watermark is distorted usingtime-invariant pitch scale (TIPS) modification. Let us further assumethat pre-distorted watermark templates only accounted for the followingTIPS modification values: 3%, 6% and 9%. In such a case, the watermarkextractor can only reliably detect and report watermarks as eithertentative or conclusive from a content that has been distorted withabout 3%, 6% or 9% TIPS impairment (plus and minus a tolerance value).In this example scenario, when the audio watermark is distorted at anyother TIPS rate (e.g., 4.5%), there is a possibility that conclusivewatermarks are not detected. It is clear that the selection of thenumber of pre-distorted templates depends significantly on the desiredreliability of SYNCH detection. As the granularity of pre-distortedtemplates increases, the chances of detecting a reliable SYNCH (e.g.,with low bit-error count or high correlation coefficient value) alsoincreases, but so does the processing load. Therefore, it is importantto provide a tradeoff between the number of pre-distortedsynchronization templates and the probability of false watermarkdetections.

In some embodiments, the granularity of pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates within a particular distortion range (and, therefore, thenumber of pre-distorted templates) is selected such that at least asingle tentative watermark is detected in the distorted content. Forexample, the number and spacing of pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates are selected in such a way that even if the distortion ismid-way between two pre-distorted templates (as in the example above),there is a good chance that SYNCH patterns are detected, followed by thedetection of a tentative watermark.

Once a tentative watermark is found, the extractor can commence moreelaborate searches of the distortion space. FIG. 5 illustrates a set ofoperations 500 that are carried out in accordance with an exampleembodiment. At 502, a watermark frame is received. The received framecan include synchronization (SYNCH) and watermark packet (PACKET). At504, the received SYNCH is compared to a plurality of pre-distortedSYNCH templates. At 506, it is determined if a SYNCH has beensuccessfully detected, and if so (i.e., “YES” at 506), the set ofoperations 500 continues at 508 to assemble the PACKET. If, on the otherhand, the determination at 506 is not indicative of a successful SYNCHdetection (i.e., “NO” at 506), the set of operations 500 continues at520, where the PACKET is discarded.

Referring back to FIG. 5, at 508, PACKET assembly may include a varietyof operations, such as de-interleaving, descrambling, and other packetformation operations. At 510, the number of errors in the assembledPACKET is determined. The operations at 510 can include, for example,decoding using error correction/detection codes, template matching, andthe like. At 512, it is determined if the number of errors in theassembled PACKET are less than a first threshold associated with thedetection of a strong (i.e., conclusive) watermark, and if so (i.e.,“YES” at 512), the detection of a conclusive watermark is declared at514. If the determination at 512 indicates an error value that isgreater than a first threshold (i.e., “NO” at 512), the set ofoperations 500 continues at 516, where it is determined if the number oferrors in the assembled PACKET are less than a second thresholdassociated with the detection of a tentative watermark. If thedetermination at 516 is a “YES,” the set of operations 500 continues at518 where the detection of a tentative watermark is declared. If, on theother hand, the indication at 516 is a “NO,” the set of operations 500continues at 520 and the PACKET is discarded.

FIG. 6 is a simplified diagram that illustrates the components 600 thatcan be used to carry out some or all of the operations that aredescribed in FIG. 5. The watermark frame receiver 602 is configured toreceive a watermark frame including the SYNCH and PACKET portions of thewatermark frame. The comparator 604(a) is configured to receive theSYNCH and compare it to one or more of the pre-distorted synchronizationtemplates, as well as the undistorted SYNCH template. The result of thecomparison can be used by the distortion estimator 604(b) to obtain anestimation of one or more distortions that are present in the content.The distortion estimator can, for example, identify the pre-distortedsynchronization template that produces the best match with the receivedSYNCH, and select one or more distortion types and/or distortion amountsassociated with the identified pre-distorted SYNCH template to representthe distortion(s) present in the content. In some embodiments, thecomparator 604(a) and the distortion estimator 604(b) are combined intoa single component (e.g., the comparator 604(a)).

The templates can be stored in a storage 606 component. The PACKETassembly component(s) 608 are configured to receive at least the PACKETand an indication as to the success or failure of the comparator 604(a)in obtaining a match between the received SYNCH and one or more of thepre-distorted synchronization templates, or the undistorted SYNCHtemplate. Upon the detection of a successful SYNCH, the PACKET assemblycomponent 608 assembles the PACKET of the watermark frame, which is usedby the PACKET error determination component(s) 610 to produce an errorcount. The produced error count is used by the evaluator 612 comprisingdecision logic component(s) to determine if the error count is confinedwithin, or is above or below a particular packet error range. Theevaluator 612 can, for example, determine (and provide an output thatindicates) if a conclusive or a tentative watermark is detected. Theevaluator 612 can also produce an indication that the PACKET is to bediscarded due to failure of the comparator 604(a) and/or distortionestimator 604(b) to detect a SYNCH match, or when neither a tentativenor a conclusive watermark is detected. The output of the evaluator 612can be used to trigger additional operations, such as triggering anexpanded packet search when a tentative watermark is detected. Theoutput of the evaluator 612 can include additional information such as awatermark value (i.e., detected watermark state, watermark pattern,etc.), indications of the level of confidence in such watermarkdetections (e.g., the packet error count, the synch error count, etc.),the amount and type of one or more distortions that are present in thecontent, and the like

The multi-step approach that is described in connection with FIGS. 5 and6 enables efficient balancing of the overall processing load in awatermark extractor and the associated probability of false positivewatermark detection, and further improves the overall robustness andsecurity of watermark extraction.

In some embodiments, the two step search of the distortion space can beimplemented in such a way that a match between a pre-distorted SYNCHtemplate and the detected candidate SYNCH pattern immediately triggersexpanded extractor operation, such as expanding the location andgranularity of the search for synchronization patterns and/or watermarkpackets. However, such an immediate expansion of extractor operationsmay not produce an optimum tradeoff in terms of processing load andprobability of false positive watermark detections. For example, let usassume that we want to improve the conclusive watermark extractionperformance over −20% to +20% pitch invariant time scaling (PITS)distortion range. We have to carefully choose the granularity of searchin order to properly populate the pre-distorted SYNCH template database606. If a fine search granularity is selected, e.g., with 1% PITSspacing, then a large number of pre-distorted templates (e.g., 40pre-distorted SYNCH templates and one undistorted SYNCH template) mayhave to be utilized in order to reliably detect the SYNCH patterns. Inthis scenario, the large number of pre-distorted SYNCH templates cannegatively affect the processing load and probability of false watermarkdetections. Moreover, if pre-distorted template matching has a highprobability of false SYNCH detections, each SYNCH detection can triggeran expanded extractor operation, which would increase the processingload and the probability of false watermark detections. On the otherhand, if a coarse search granularity is selected, e.g., with 5% PITSspacing, then there is a potential that the embedded SYNCHs, as well asthe corresponding watermark PACKETS, are not detected. Further, ifpre-distorted template matching has a probability of false SYNCHdetection that is too low, then many watermarks in the distorted contentmay fail to be detected. Such a shortcoming may, however, be compensatedby increasing the number of pre-distorted templates at the expense ofadditional processing load. It is, therefore, advantageous to generate afinite number of pre-distorted synchronization templates and utilizethem in a watermark extractor in a way that improves the balancing oftrue watermark detections, processing load and probability of falsewatermark detections.

FIG. 7 illustrates a set of operations 700 that can be carried out togenerate a set of pre-distorted watermark templates in accordance withan exemplary embodiment. It should be noted that in describing the setof operations 700 in FIG. 7, references are made to pre-distortedwatermark templates. However, it is understood that such templates canbe generated for one or both of a synchronization pattern and a knownwatermark packet pattern. For example, a watermark with a two-bitpayload can only signal the presence of one of four different states. Insuch a system, a unique symbol pattern can be associated with each ofthe watermark states, and for each unique symbol pattern, the set ofoperations 700 that are described in connection with FIG. 7 can becarried out.

Referring to FIG. 7, at 702, one or more pilot signals are generated.These signals may correspond to specific functions such as impulses,sinusoidal functions, square waves, flat images, edge images, and thelike. It should be noted that the term “signal” is used to convey aspecific type of content that may be transmitted, received and stored indigital or analog form. Such signals can be subject to signal processingoperations such as modulation/demodulation, A/D and D/A conversions,compression, re-sampling and the like. The pilot signals that aregenerated (or otherwise obtained) at 702, once embedded withsynchronization patterns and/or watermark packets and distorted (ortransmitted through a noisy channel), can provide insights as to thecharacteristics of the distortion and the transmission channel, as wellas how such distortions and/or transmissions affect the embeddedwatermarks. In an alternate embodiment, instead of a pilot signal, atypical content (e.g., a concatenation of different types of movies) isadditionally, or alternatively, generated or obtained at 702.

At 704, the pilot signals are embedded with watermarks. At 704 theembedded pilot signals undergo one or more distortions. Thesedistortions can include, but are not limited to, various time scalingdistortions, A/D and D/A distortions, cropping, rotation, scaling,spatial and/or temporal shifts and the like. The distortions can beapplied to the host pilot signals at 706 using one or more distortionparameters that can span a particular range. For example, a lineartime-scaling (LTS) distortion can be applied in accordance with an LTSpercentage parameter that ranges between −10% to +10% at 1% increments.At 708, watermarks are extracted from the distorted pilot signals. At710, for each successful watermark extraction, a pre-distorted candidatewatermark template is generated that corresponds to a particulardistortion with a particular distortion parameter. At 712, a set ofdistorted watermarks are received from the field. In one example, theset of distorted watermarks at 712 are produced by extracting watermarksfrom the host pilot signals subsequent to watermark embedding at 704,after the host pilot signals have undergone a real-world transmissionthrough a noisy channel. For instance, the host pilot signals thatcontain embedded watermarks can be played back in a movie theatre,captured using a camcorder, and input to watermark extractor to obtainthe distorted watermarks.

At 714, the received distorted watermarks are compared against thecandidate pre-distorted watermark templates. This comparison can revealwhich of the candidate pre-distorted watermark templates are of bestmatch or relevance. At 716, the relevant pre-distorted watermarktemplates are sorted (e.g., in the order of relevance or best match) andstored in a database. In some embodiments, the database may include asubset of the pre-distorted watermark templates that produced either atentative watermark or a strong watermark. Note that the pre-distortedtemplate database can be updated and/or supplemented with new templateswhen a new distorted watermark from the field is obtained.

The process of experimental selection of pre-distorted watermarktemplates, as described in the exemplary diagram of FIG. 7, can berepeated for each distortion over a particular range, as well as forcombinations of distortions. In some embodiments, in order to limit thenumber of distortions that are carried out on pilot signals to within apractical limit, critical distortion vectors (e.g., distortions due totime/space/frequency scaling attacks over a particular range, camcordercapture, low-bit rate perceptual compression, etc.) are firstidentified. Then pre-distorted watermark templates for criticaldistortion vectors, and combinations thereof, are determined. All otherdistortion vectors (e.g., non-critical distortion vectors) can be testedagainst the pre-distorted templates of critical distortion vectors todetermine if additional pre-distorted watermark templates are needed.

FIG. 8 is a simplified diagram of the components that can be used tocarry out some or all of the operations 700 of FIG. 7. The embeddingapparatus 802 is used to embed the pilot signals that are subsequentlysubject to various distortions using the distortion processingcomponents 804. The distorted embedded pilot signals that are generatedby the distortion processing components 804 are input to the extractorcomponents 806, where pre-distorted watermark templates are generatedthat correspond to a particular distortion with a particular distortionparameter. In FIG. 8, these watermark templates are labeled “WM Template1,” “WM Template 2,” etc. FIG. 8 also depicts the modified embeddedpilot content obtained from the field that is input to the extractorcomponents 808. In some embodiments, the extractor components 806 andextractor components 808 are the same physical device. In otherembodiments, such as in embodiments where distributed processing isused, the extractor components 806 and extractor components 808 may bedifferent physical entities that can be located at different physicallocations.

FIG. 8 further illustrates template matching and sorting components 810that compare and match the distorted watermarks from the field to thepre-distorted candidate watermark templates that are generated by theextractor components 806. The results of the matching and sortingoperations for various distortions are stored in database(s) 812.

In some embodiments, in order to reduce the processing load and theprobability of false watermark detection, the extractor may skip one ormore of pre-distorted watermark templates at any candidate watermarklocation. In the sections that follow, this approach is sometimereferred to as sparse search over the distortion space. One disadvantageof skipping a subset of per-distorted watermarks is that the extractorcan lose the opportunity for watermark extraction. However, if number ofopportunities is sufficiently large, the overall impact of missedopportunities can be negligible. Furthermore, in some embodiments, ifthe extractor finds a tentative watermark at another stage of watermarkextraction process (e.g., at a different extraction opportunity), theextractor can be configured to explore some of the missed opportunities,for example, based on tentative watermark extrapolation that isdiscussed below. In one variation, only the missed opportunities withhigh probability of successful watermark detection are visited, not allof them. This is achieved by revisiting only those opportunities thatmatch the distortion parameters associated with the detected tentativewatermark or watermarks.

In designing a sparse search over the distortion space, the disclosedembodiments can utilize the following two features. First, a subset ofpre-distorted watermark templates is selected at random (orpseudo-random). If such a decision is deterministic, an attacker mayfind the deterministic pattern either experimentally or through reverseengineering, and subsequently adjust the distortion pattern to match theskipped search space to evade watermark detection.

Second, it is advantageous if the extractor knows the likelihood ofcertain distortions being present. For example, if the watermark conveysa “Theatrical release” state in an audiovisual content, then a typicalpiracy scenario involves camcordering the content. For this attackscenario, suitable types of pre-distorted templates (e.g., templatesthat correspond to cropping, stretching, rotation, etc.) are selectedwith higher probability than other pre-distorted templates (e.g.,time/frequency scaling, etc.). Similarly, if the watermark conveys a“Trusted Source” state, indicating that the content is in digitallyencrypted format, then perceptual transcoding is a likely attack andpre-distorted templates associated with perceptual compression areselected with a high probability. Generally, the probability ofpre-distortion template selection is proportional to the probability ofa particular distortion being present in the content, as long as suchprobability can be estimated.

In some embodiments, distortion calculations are conducted based on twoor more distinct watermarks. Two or more distinct watermarks maycomprise SYNCH patterns alone, tentative watermarks alone, or acombination of SYNCH and tentative watermarks. When those watermarkshave a predefined mutual relationship at the embedder, and therelationship is known to the extractor, any departure from thisrelationship can be used to calculate the nature and the amount of thedistortion. For example if two synchronization patterns in an image areembedded along a horizontal line, and they are detected such that theline connecting them makes an angle against the horizontal line, it canbe assumed that the image is rotated by the detected angle. Similarly,if audio watermarks are embedded periodically with the period P, and theextractor finds them spaced apart at P′, it can be assumed that thecontent is time scaled by the factor P′/P.

Distortion calculation based on SYNCH patterns alone may have certainmerits such as a reduced processing load. However, the use of tentativewatermarks instead of SYNCH patterns can provide a superior performancesince tentative watermarks typically have a lower probability of falsedetection and better location resolution. As noted earlier, thedetection of SYNCH patterns is typically characterized by a higherprobability of false detection when compared to the detection ofwatermark packets. This is done to balance the processing load androbustness requirements of the extraction process. Therefore distortioncalculations based on embedded SYNCH patterns alone, may produceincorrect or unreliable distortion estimates. However, if a tentativewatermark is detected, it provides additional confidence in the presenceand location of the detected watermark.

Once the distortion amount is calculated based on the two or morewatermarks, the next step is to evaluate if the distortion is realistic.For example, it is safe to assume that image rotation during videocamcordering will not be larger than 20 degrees (relative to either avertical or a horizontal baseline), or that time compression of an audiotrack will not be larger than 50%. Any distortion amount larger thanthose predefined limits is likely to render the image or the audiounperceivable and, therefore, a distortion computation that yieldsvalues beyond those limits is likely attributed to false watermarkdetections.

When a realistic distortion amount is detected, then additionalpre-distorted watermark templates can be selected and/or generated thatcorrespond to a distortion in the neighborhood of the calculateddistortion, and used for further watermark searches. A pre-distortedwatermark template can correspond to the SYNCH portion of a watermarkframe, the PACKET portion of a watermark frame, the combined SYNCH andPACKET portions of a watermark frame or a fraction of the SYNCH orPACKET portions of the watermark frame. The additional pre-distortedwatermark templates may be repeatedly correlated with the extractedwatermarks in order to increase the reliability of the watermarkdetection and the reliability of the distortion calculation. Forexample, watermark extraction with a new watermark template may yield awatermark with fewer errors or higher correlation value (and thus ahigher reliability) than a previously detected tentative watermark. Thewatermark that is detected with the higher reliability can then be usedto re-calculate the amount of estimated distortion. In some real-timeapplications (e.g., when watermark extraction occurs during real-timeplayback of a content), it may be difficult to conduct repeated searchesover the same segment of the content. Therefore, in some embodiments,the additional pre-distorted watermark templates are used only forsubsequent content segments.

FIG. 9 illustrates a set of operations 900 that can be carried out tofacilitate search of the distortion in accordance with an exampleembodiment. At 902, tentative watermarks are extracted. At 904, theamount of distortion is estimated based on the detection of two or moretentative watermarks. For example, as noted earlier, the spacing betweentwo detected watermarks can be used to estimate the amount of lineartime scaling in an audio content. At 906, it is determined if theestimated distortion amount is below a particular threshold. Theoperations at 906 provide a mechanism to determine if the estimateddistortion is realistic. If the estimated distortion is above thethreshold, the distortion estimation is discarded at 912. At this pointthe set of operations 900 returns to 902 to wait until another viableset of tentative watermarks becomes available to repeat the distortionestimations at 904, or to use another set of already available tentativewatermarks to produce another estimate of the distortion.

If the distortion estimation is below the threshold (i.e., “YES” at906), additional pre-distorted watermark templates are selected and/orgenerated at 908. The “generation” of pre-distorted watermark templatesat 908 may be accomplished using an algorithm and the associatedparameters that allows the generation of new pre-distorted watermarktemplates. Alternatively, or additionally, appropriate pre-distortedwatermark templates may be selected from a database. At 910, theadditional pre-distorted watermark templates are used to detectwatermarks with a higher reliability and/or to improve the estimation ofcontent distortion.

In distorted content, the tentative watermarks carry uncertainty abouttheir exact locations and parameters. Therefore the distortioncalculations are also approximate. As noted in connection with FIG. 9,additional pre-distorted watermark templates can be selected at 908 toimprove watermark detection and/or distortion estimation. In someembodiments, the additional pre-distorted watermark templates areselected in such a way to effect a more efficient and reliable watermarkdetection and/or distortion estimation. In particular, when generatingpre-distorted watermark templates, multiple watermarked contents aredistorted in a predefined manner, tentative watermarks are detected, thedistortion is estimated based on detected tentative watermarks, andstatistics of the errors associated with the calculated distortions arecollected. When selecting/generating the additional pre-distortedwatermark templates at a watermark extractor (e.g., operation 908 inFIG. 9), such additional pre-distorted watermark templates areselected/generated not only based on the estimated distortion (e.g.,obtained from operation 904), but also based on the distortions thatfall within the range of expected errors. Therefore, for each estimateddistortion amount, multiple pre-distorted watermark templates can beselected, all of them in the vicinity of the estimated distortion. Thisway, the chances of extracting watermarks with high reliability aresignificantly improved, without a significant increase in the number oftemplate matching attempts.

In some embodiments, the estimation of the distortion is carried outusing a single tentative watermark. As noted earlier, in order to reducethe processing load of the extractor, as well as the probability offalse watermark detection, only a subset of pre-distorted watermarktemplates may be used to conduct an initial search of the embeddedwatermarks. Such a subset of templates enables a coarse search of thedistortion space. When a single tentative watermark is detected using acoarse granulation of the distortion space, there is a good chance thata more reliable watermark may be found if the distortion space issearched with a finer granularity in the vicinity of the distortionparameters that triggered the detection of the tentative watermark.

FIG. 10 illustrates a set of operations 1000 that can be carried out toextract embedded watermarks from a distorted content in accordance withan exemplary embodiment. At 1002, a watermark frame is received and, at1004, a multi-step search for a tentative watermark is conducted. In oneexample, the operations at 1002 and 1004 are carried out using the setof operations that is described in connection with FIG. 5. At 1006, itis determined if a tentative watermark is detected. If a tentativewatermark is not detected, the operations 1000 continue at 1018, wherethe system waits for the next tentative watermark. If the determinationat 1006 indicates that a tentative watermark is detected, the operations1000 continue at 1008, where distortion information is estimated. Theestimation of distortion information can, for example, include thedetermination of the amount of a particular distortion (or combinationof distortions) that is present in the received content. In oneembodiment, this estimation can be carried out by assembling (orotherwise obtaining the assembled) one or more SYNCH portions of thewatermark frames and comparing them to one or more pre-distorted SYNCHtemplates that correspond to various amounts of a particular distortion(or combination of distortions). As noted earlier, in some embodimentsthe estimation of the distortion amount and/or the detection of thetentative watermark are carried out pursuant to a coarse search of thedistortion space. Watermark detections that are produced pursuant tosuch a coarse search provide estimated distortion information that isindicative of a coarse value of a particular distortion, or combinationof distortions, present in the embedded host content.

At 1010, additional (or supplementary) pre-distorted watermark templatesare selected and/or generated to conduct a finer search of thedistortion space. The additionally selected/generated templatescorrespond to distortion values in the neighborhood of the (coarse)distortion value obtained at 1008. Let us consider a TIPS modificationexample for an audio content, where the initial set of pre-distortedwatermark templates allowed a coarse or sparse search of the timescaling space at 3%, 6% and 9% values. If the audio content in thisexample is distorted at 3.5%, during the coarse search of the distortionspace, the best SYNCH assembly followed by successful tentativewatermark packet assembly may be obtained using the pre-distortedwatermark templates associated with 3% TIPS. For this example, theselection of additional distorted watermark templates (i.e., theoperations at 1010) can include the selection or generation ofpre-distorted watermark templates in the neighborhood of the 3% TIPSdistortion (e.g., 2.5% to 3.5% in steps of 0.1%).

At 1012, the number of packet errors associated with the tentativewatermark is re-evaluated using the newly selected/generatedpre-distorted watermark templates. In one embodiment, the candidaterecovered PACKET is compared against some or all of the additionalpre-distorted watermark templates to produce the associated errorcounts. As such, the new set of pre-distorted PACKET templates can beused for repeated search over the same content segment where thetentative watermark was detected, or for searches in subsequent contentsegments.

At 1014, the packet or packet template that produced the least number oferrors is selected. The selected packet/packet template corresponds toan amount of distortion that more accurately represents the true amountof distortion that is present in the received content. Therefore, insome scenarios, the re-evaluated packet errors can indicate the presence(and a more accurate location) of an embedded watermark with a higherreliability. For example, operations at 1014 may result in the detectionof a strong or conclusive watermark. At 1016, distortion information forassembly of future packets and/or synchronization patterns is updatedbased on the packet/template that produced the best error values at1014.

It should be noted that while the operations at 1014 are described asselecting a packet/template that produces the least number of errors,the operations at 1012 and 1014 should also produce a selection thatcorresponds to a low false positive detection probability. In analternate embodiment, an iterative procedure is used to enable theextraction of watermarks and estimation of the distortion. In thisembodiment, the supplementary pre-distorted watermark templates in theneighborhood of the previously estimated distortion areselected/generated, one at-a-time. For example, a first supplementarypre-distorted watermark template may correspond to a slightly lesscontent distortion than that the pre-distorted watermark template usedfor tentative watermark detection at 1004. If the first supplementarypre-distorted watermark template produces fewer bit-errors, or highercorrelation with candidate watermark, a second supplementarypre-distorted watermark template is selected to correspond to a contentdistortion that is yet smaller than the first supplementarypre-distorted watermark template. On the other hand, if the firstsupplementary pre-distorted watermark template results in a largernumber of bit-errors, or a reduced correlation value, the secondsupplementary pre-distorted watermark template is selected to correspondto a content distortion that is greater than the distortion associatedwith the pre-distorted watermark template used for tentative watermarkdetection at 1004. The iterations may continue until one of thepre-distorted watermark templates provides the best watermark detection,and the best estimate for the content distortion. In some examples,numerical methods such as the bisection or Newton's method may be usedto facilitate the convergence of the iterations. The above describediterative procedure obtains the most reliable estimate of a detectedwatermark more efficiently and with lower probability of falsedetections than multiple searches at fine granularity.

In some embodiments, upon the detection of a tentative watermark,extrapolation techniques are used to improve the reliability ofwatermark detections. In distorted content, individual watermarks may bedamaged to the extent that no conclusive watermark detection is possibledespite the efforts of distortion calculation and compensation describedabove. In these situations, the extractor may continue the search forsubsequent watermarks in the content in the vicinity of the detectedtentative watermarks. However, if one or more additional tentativewatermarks are found in subsequent searches, then a joint “weight” ofthe two or more watermarks may be calculated and used to furtherre-evaluate the watermark presence.

In some embodiments, an alternative approach may be adopted that relieson watermark embedding patterns to predict the location, symbol patternand watermarking parameters of neighboring watermarks. Typically weexpect repeated embedding of the same watermark throughout the content,but more complex embedding patterns are also possible and, in somecases, advantageous. In some scenarios, for example, the neighboringwatermarks may differ from one another in a known way, such as whenembedded watermarks include a counter that is incremented with theembedding of every additional watermark packet, or when the payloads ofneighboring watermark packets are scrambled with different scramblingkeys. In scenarios where the embedded pattern of succeeding and/orpreceding watermarks are known, the detection of a tentative watermarkcan be extrapolated to assess the presence and value of other embeddedwatermarks in anticipated locations within the content. In someembodiments, the detected tentative watermark is used to predict theexistence of other watermark patterns within the content. Thisprediction is subsequently tested (e.g., using a hypothesis testingstatistical method), which can lead to the rejection or confirmation ofthe validity of watermark detection.

FIG. 11A shows an example watermark frame sequence with SYNCH and PACKETportions similar to those presented in FIG. 3A. Following a successfulassembly and detection of the SYNCH, the PACKET is assembled. Whensignificant amount of distortion is applied to the content, it may behard or impossible to detect the SYNCH portion of the watermark frame.FIG. 11B shows that PACKET #1 is assembled after successful assembly ofthe preceding SYNCH. However, PACKETS #2 and #3 are not assembled due tosevere distortion to the corresponding SYNCH portions of watermarkframes #2 and #3. FIG. 11C shows an example where following thedetection of a tentative watermark, an extrapolation of the tentativewatermark is performed across watermark frames #2 and #3 (that areexpected to include PACKETS #2 and #3). In a typical extrapolationscenario, some of the symbols of the extrapolated watermark(s) areexpected to match the associated symbols in the non-extrapolated (i.e.,tentative) watermark. Upon assembly of the symbols of the extrapolatedwatermarks, symbol errors are counted, probability of false watermarkdetections are estimated and weights to the extrapolated watermark(s)are assigned. The assigned weights can be accumulated to collectivelyassess the presence and value of the watermarks.

The extrapolation techniques of the disclosed embodiments includefeatures that can improve the likelihood of detecting embeddedwatermarks while keeping the probability of false watermark detectionswithin desirable limits. In particular, in some embodiments, whenextrapolating to search for additional watermarks, there is no need tofind additional SYNCH patterns in order to assemble the next watermarkpacket symbols. In distorted content, many SYNCH patterns are likely tobe damaged beyond recognition. However, the extrapolation techniques ofthe present application enable the assembly and usage of packet symbolseven if the SYNCH portions of the watermark frames are not detected forall potential watermark frames.

Moreover, in some of the extrapolation techniques of the disclosedembodiments, the number of extraction attempts to detect an extrapolatedwatermark can be as low as one. Therefore, the weight(s) that areassigned to the extrapolated watermark symbols need not be adjusted tomaintain the desired probability of false detections. In certainembodiments, however, in order to account for the uncertainty associatedwith distortion estimations and the true location of a tentativewatermark, watermark extrapolation attempts may be carried out using afew starting offsets and a few distortion estimates. Such an approachfacilitates achieving the best tradeoff between robustness andprobability of false detections. Even in this scenario, the number ofattempts is significantly lower than in systems where weightaccumulation is triggered based on independent detection of embeddedwatermarks. In such independent detection of embedded watermarks, thedetection of each watermark (e.g., each tentative watermark) requiresthe detection of the associated SYNCH portion, as illustrated in FIGS.3B and 11B.

FIG. 12 shows exemplary plots of the probability of false watermarkdetection versus the watermark weight threshold. The exemplary plots inFIG. 12 correspond to experimental results obtained for watermark frameswith binary symbols, with 32-bit SYNCH portions and 64-bit PACKETportions that were embedded in an audio content. The curve 1220corresponds to the sparse granularity search of the distortion space andthe curve 1240 corresponds to the fine granularity search obtained usingthe watermark extrapolation techniques of the disclosed embodiments.FIG. 12 also shows a third curve 1260 that corresponds to theprobability of false watermark detection for an extractor that operatesbased on independent recovery of watermarks to effect weightaccumulation. Note that for a probability of false watermark detectionof about 5×10⁻⁹, the watermark weight threshold using the disclosedtentative watermark extrapolation techniques (both sparse and finesearch) is less than the threshold used in independent weightaccumulation technique. As such, in comparison with weight accumulationtechniques based on independent detection of embedded watermarks, thedisclosed extrapolation techniques that are based on extrapolation of apreviously detected tentative watermark produce similar or better falsepositive performance at a lower computational processing load. At thesame time, detections that are based on extrapolation of a previouslydetected tentative watermark require a lower watermark detectionthreshold value that requires the detection of a tentative watermark asoppose to a conclusive watermark. These features greatly improve therobustness performance of the watermark extractor.

FIG. 18 illustrates a set of operations 1800 that can be carried out toextrapolate watermarks in accordance with an exemplary embodiment. At1802, a tentative watermark is extracted. The operations at 1802 can,for example, include at least some of the operations that were discussedin connection with FIGS. 5, 9 and 10. At 1804, one or more extrapolatedwatermarks are formed. For example, such a formation of packets may beaccomplished by obtaining symbols of potential watermark frames that arepositioned within the embedded host content at a predefined locationrelative to the extracted tentative watermark. At 1806, the extrapolatedwatermark(s) are collectively assessed with the already-extractedtentative watermark. At 1808, it is determined if the collectiveassessment of the watermarks results in satisfying a desired probabilityof false watermark detection. For example, such a desired probability offalse watermark detection can correspond to the detection probabilityassociated with a conclusive watermark.

The amount of watermark extrapolation that is carried out in accordancewith the disclosed embodiments depends on the nature of the distortion,as well as the precision of distortion estimations. For example, in thecase of audio watermarks that are distorted due to acoustic propagationof the host content, time scaling distortion is typically negligiblewhile background noise and reverberations appear to be the main sourcesof distortion. In this environment, assuming that watermarks areperiodically embedded, it is possible to conduct successfulextrapolations that span several watermark lengths. On the other hand,if content is subject to time scaling attacks, the precision associatedwith estimating the time scaling distortion can be limited and,therefore, only a small number of watermark extrapolations in each timedirection may be feasible.

In some cases, the distortion varies in time or space either as a resultof content transformations or intentional attacks. For example, audiotape players are known to produce wow or flutter artifacts as a resultof variations in the speed of the tape players' motors. As a result, theproduced time scaling factor changes with time based on the variationsof the motor speed. Similar techniques can be adopted by attackers inorder to interfere with proper estimation and compensation of timescaling distortions in a watermarked content. One caveat, however, isthat time-varying distortions that are too fast and/or too largetypically produce objectionable perceptible artifacts and reduce theviability of the attack. Therefore, it may be beneficial to develop moreeffective countermeasures that increase the robustness of watermarkextraction in the presence of time varying distortions that slowly varyover the watermark duration.

Experiments conducted by the inventors indicate that, when distortionvaries slowly over the length of the watermark, tentative watermarkdetection is often achieved with pre-distorted SYNCH templates thatroughly fit somewhere within the distortion variation range. However,over the duration of a watermark PACKET, which is typically larger thanthe SYNCH portion, the distortion may fluctuate to values that areoutside of the detection range of pre-distorted watermark templates.This means that a pre-distorted packet template may only match to theactual distortion for limited sections of the watermark frame, therebycausing significant symbol error rates.

According to some embodiments, in cases where the embedded watermarksymbol pattern is known before hand (e.g., through previously detectedtentative watermark payload, by considering only a limited set ofpayloads, etc.), the entire watermark interval is divided into segmentsand watermark extraction attempts are conducted for each segment. Thisoperation can be better understood by reference to in FIG. 11D. Notethat the horizontal scale in FIG. 11D may be different from those inFIGS. 11A to 11C. Starting with the distortion estimate obtained fromthe SYNCH detection and/or tentative watermark detection of PACKET #1,the extraction of the first watermark segment, SEG 1, is attempted usingone or more of the pre-distorted watermark templates that correspond tothe estimated distortion value. In some embodiments, SEG 1 includes allor a portion of the SYNCH that is expected to follow PACKET #1. Forinstance, if a watermark frame consists of a 20-bit SYNCH and a 100-bitPACKET, in one example, each segment can comprise 20 bits (i.e., 6segments per frame). In another example, each segment can comprise 30bits (i.e., 4 segments per frame). In yet another example, each segmentcan comprise 10 bits (i.e., 12 segments per frame). In still anotherexample, the SYNCH portion may be skipped and only segment matching forthe PACKET portion of the watermark frame may be carried out. The aboveexamples are not intended to provide an exhaustive list of differentsegment sizes and segmentation configurations, but are provided toillustrate that different segment sizes and configurations can beselected based on the needs and capabilities of the watermark detectionsystem and the target application.

In some embodiments, the number of segments is selected based on anextent (e.g., duration, spatial extent, etc.) of the extracted tentativewatermark. For example, watermarks with a smaller payload may besegmented into fewer segments than watermarks with larger payloads.Other factors in determining the number of segments is the amount ofdistortion(s) present (or anticipated to be present) in the embeddedhost content, and/or the type of distortion(s) present (or anticipatedto be present) in the embedded host content. The selection of the numberof segments can change dynamically based on, for example, the amount andtype of distortion, or can be done statically or semi-statically, wherethe number of segments is fixed. Moreover, the length of each segmentcan be selected based on amounts and/or types of anticipated distortionsin the content.

Referring back to FIG. 11D, in some embodiments, a pre-distortedwatermark template closest to the estimated distortion value is used forextrapolated detection of SEG 1, as well as one or more pre-distortedwatermark templates that correspond to distortions in the vicinity ofthe estimated distortion value. Whichever matching attempt produces thebest result, its associated distortion level is used as the startingdistortion estimate for the next segment, SEG 2. The above notedoperations continue for other segments, SEG 2, . . . , SEG K, of theextrapolated watermarks. This way, the slowly varying distortion can beeffectively tracked and mitigated by utilizing the proper pre-distortedwatermark templates.

FIG. 13 illustrates a set of operations 1300 that can be carried out toextrapolate watermarks on a segment-by-segment basis in accordance withan exemplary embodiment. At 1302, a watermark frame is received and, at1304, a multi-step search for a tentative watermark is conducted. In oneexample, the operations at 1302 and 1304 are carried out using the setof operations that are described in connection with FIG. 5. At 1306, itis determined if a tentative watermark is detected. If a tentativewatermark is not detected, the set of operations 1300 continue at 1320,where the system waits for the next frame, and then repeats operationsthat are conducted at 1302 through 1306. If the determination at 1306 isindicative of a detection of tentative watermark (i.e., “YES” at 1306),the set of operations 1300 continues at 1308, where distortioninformation is estimated. The estimation of distortion information can,for example, include the determination of the amount and type of adistortion (or a combination of distortions) present in the receivedcontent. In one embodiment, this estimation can be carried out byassembling the SYNCH portion of the watermark frame (or obtaining thealready assembled SYNCH portion) and comparing it to one or morepre-distorted SYNCH templates that correspond to various amounts of aparticular distortion (or distortions). As noted earlier, the estimationof the distortion amount and/or the detection of the tentative watermarkare typically carried out pursuant to a coarse search of the distortionspace.

At 1310, the granularity of the search is determined. The granularity ofthe search (e.g., the number of pre-distorted packets and their spacingin the distortion space) may be initially selected based on certaindefault values, may be adjusted for the initial segment assessment basedon the estimated distortion information and/or may be based on errorminimization criteria on a segment-by-segment basis. The criteria can beselected based on the desired probability of false watermark detection,robustness and computational complexity. In some embodiments, thecriteria are adapted in response to the observed or anticipateddistortions. Based on the error minimization criteria, pre-distortedwatermark templates at the segment level (which may reside locally atthe watermark extractor or remotely at a database) are re-arranged andre-sorted to conform to the error minimization criteria. Further, theselection rules for selecting the pre-distorted watermark templates canbe updated to enable the watermark extrapolator to select the best setof pre-distorted watermark segment templates. In some embodiments, theerror minimization criteria further triggers the selection of a newstego key that can be used to extract subsequent watermarks. The stegokey selection can be done in such a way to optimize at least one ofrobustness, security, and computational efficiency for the extraction ofwatermarks embedded in the host content. Additionally, the selecting ofthe one or more stego keys may be adapted to anticipate transformationsof the host content. For example, the transformations may alter theappearance of at least one watermark that is embedded with a firstembedding stego key such that the at least one embedded watermarkappears to have been embedded with a second embedding stego key.

Referring back to FIG. 13, at 1312, watermark extrapolation for thesegment under consideration is performed. In some embodiments, theoperations at 1312 comprise comparing the symbols of the segment underconsideration to one or more pre-distorted watermark templates at thesegment level. For example, such a comparison can be carried out using abit-wise exclusive OR (XOR) operation between the segment bits and thebits of the pre-distorted watermark template. Based on the granularityof the search and the estimated distortion information, one or moreextrapolation attempts may be conducted that, for example, produces oneor more error values. The operations at 1312 further comprise selectingthe best match result (e.g., one that produces the least number oferrors). At 1314, it is optionally determined if all segments have beenprocessed. Such a determination can be made by comparing the number ofsegments that have been processed so far to the number of segments thatare anticipated to comprise a watermark packet based on factors thatinclude the length of detected tentative watermark packet, the amountand type of distortion that is present, and the like. In someembodiments, it is not necessary to process all the segments. As such,the subsequent operations (i.e., operations at 1316 and 1318) may becarried out upon extrapolation of one or more segments that collectivelyspan a smaller extent (e.g., duration, spatial extent, etc.) than thetentative watermark. In these embodiments, the operations at 1314 maycomprise the determination as to whether or not a predetermined numberof segments in the range 1 to k have been processed. In someembodiments, k is the number of segments that are anticipated tocomprise one watermark packet. In other embodiments, k is the number ofsegments that are anticipated to comprise more than one watermarkpacket. In embodiments where the processed segments collectively span asmaller extent than the tentative watermark, additional extrapolatedsegments can be processed and evaluated if the operation at 1318 failsto produce the desired results.

Referring back to FIG. 13, and assuming that the operation at 1314 iscarried out, if the determination at 1314 indicates that additionalsegments must be processed (i.e., “NO” at 1314), the set of operations1300 returns to 1308, and new estimations of the distortion informationis obtained based on the results of extrapolation of the previoussegment. For example, at 1308, an estimate of the distortion space canbe refined (e.g., based on the pre-distorted watermark template thatproduced the best match result at 1312).

If the determination at 1314 indicates that all segments have beenprocessed (“YES” at 1314), the set of operations 1300 continues at 1316,where weights are assigned to each segment. In one example, the weightsare assigned according to Equations (9) and (10) that are provided inthe sections that follow. At 1318, the presence and value of thewatermark are evaluated based on collective assessment of one or moresegments. For example, weights that are assigned at 1316 can be addedtogether and compared to a weight threshold that signifies the detectionof a watermark with a particular level of reliability. It should benoted that the set of operations 1300 that are depicted in FIG. 13 maybe carried out in a different sequential order. For example, theassignment of weights to each segment can be carried out at the sametime, or immediately after, performing watermark extrapolation for thatsegment. It should be further noted that the process of distortiontracking described above also increases the probability of falsewatermark detection. Therefore, care needs to be taken to ensure thatthe probability of false conclusive watermark detection stays withinpredefined limits.

FIG. 14 is a simplified diagram of certain components that can be usedto carry out some or all of the operations of FIG. 13 and/or FIG. 18 inaccordance with the disclosed embodiments. The components that are shownin FIG. 14 may reside, at least in-part, in a content handling devicethat can, for example, play, record, copy, transfer, or otherwise accessa content. The content receiver components 1402 are configured toreceive the modified embedded content. The modified embedded contentmay, for example, be a content that contains embedded watermark and hasbeen subjected to intentional or unintentional distortions. The receivedmodified embedded content is provided, in proper format, to themulti-step search components 1404 that are configured to produce one ormore tentative watermarks and the segments that will be the subject ofextrapolation. The multi-step search components 1404 may utilize a stegokey that can be supplied by the stego key selection components 1410. Thestego keys may be stored on a stego key storage component 1408. Thewatermark extrapolator components 1406 are configured to performwatermark extrapolation, either for an entire watermark frame or on asegment-by-segment basis. In some embodiments, the template selectioncomponents 1418 are configured to receive/retrieve pre-distortedwatermark templates, in full, or on a segment-by-segment basis. Forexample, the template selection components 1418 can retrieve one or morepre-distorted watermark templates from the database 1416 and make themavailable to the watermark extrapolator components 1406.

Referring back to FIG. 14, the error minimization criteria determinationcomponents 1412 are configured to receive the results produced by thewatermark extrapolator components 1406. The error minimization criteriadetermination components 1412 may be further configured to receiveadditional input from a user, or an entity within the larger system ordevice, that allows error minimization criteria determination components1412 to determine a desired search granularity. The error minimizationcriteria determination components 1412 are further configured tocommunicate with the stego key selection components 1410, the templateselection components 1418 and the template rearrangement components 1414to, for example, convey a new search granularity, update templateselection rules, and the like. The template rearrangement components1414 are configured to rearrange the pre-distorted watermark templatesbased on information that is provided by the error minimization criteriadetermination components 1412. The template rearrangement components1414 can retrieve and store the pre-distorted watermark templatesfrom/to the database 1416. The evaluator components 1420 can performvarious watermark assessment operations, such as assigning weights tothe extrapolated segments or watermarks, comparing the extrapolatedwatermarks, or segments thereof, to pre-distorted templates, determiningif the collective assessment of extrapolated watermarks or watermarksegments conforms to the desired probability of false watermarkdetection, report an amount and type of distortion present in the hostcontent, and the like. In some embodiments, the evaluator components1420 are incorporated into the watermark extrapolator components 1406.

According to some embodiments, watermark extraction is facilitateddepending on the nature of errors that may contaminate or distort acontent. In particular, content processing and/or intentional contentattacks can inject random or burst errors into the watermarks that areembedded in the content. For example, burst errors in a video imagecaptured by a camcorder can be caused by a sudden camcorder movement,and burst errors in the captured audio may be caused, for example, byunwanted sounds in the background (such as a person's cough). Accordingto some embodiments, in the presence of burst errors, the performance ofthe watermark extraction system can be enhanced if the probability offalse watermark detection is estimated for watermark segments ratherthan for the entire watermark. To achieve this enhancement in watermarkextraction, and to reduce the processing load, in one exampleembodiment, weights of individual segments are calculated andaccumulated over the entire watermark instead of calculating the weightfor the entire watermark itself.

The following example embodiment illustrates how to estimate weights forindividual watermark segments. Let us assume that a watermark segment isrepresented by a string of n bits, and an extractor discovers that aparticular segment contains e bit-errors. The number errors, e, can, forexample, be determined by comparing the bits that comprise the segmentwith a template that represents the actual bits in that watermarksegment. Weight, W(n,e), associated with such a segment can berepresented by Equation (9) below.

$\begin{matrix}{{W\left( {n,e} \right)} = {{- {\log_{10}\left( {2^{- n}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{e}\begin{pmatrix}n \\i\end{pmatrix}}} \right)}} - {{w_{u}(n)}.}}} & (9)\end{matrix}$

In Equation (9), w_(u)(n) represents the expected weight of anun-watermarked segment of length n, which can be represented accordingEquation (10) below.

$\begin{matrix}{{w_{u}(n)} = {- {\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{n}{2^{- n}\begin{pmatrix}n \\j\end{pmatrix}{{\log_{10}\left( {2^{- n}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{j}\begin{pmatrix}n \\i\end{pmatrix}}} \right)}.}}}}} & (10)\end{matrix}$

FIG. 15 shows an exemplary plot of the expected weight of anun-watermarked segment as a function of segment length, n, in bits thatis produced based on Equation (10). To illustrate the utilization ofEquations (9) and (10) and the plot in FIG. 15, let us consider a 64-bitcandidate watermark PACKET with 20 bits in error. According to Equation(9), the weight associated with such a packet is 2.3462. However, if thewatermark is divided into two 32-bit segments, and if an error bursthappens to cause 16 bit errors in the first segment and 4 bit errors inthe second segment, the accumulated weight for the two segments is 4.52.Therefore, by examining the two segments separately and then combiningthe results, the presence of the watermark with a higher confidence canbe established. In some embodiments, the segment length (or moregenerally the segment extent as may be applicable to multi-dimensionalwatermarks) is selected in such a way to facilitate (or optimize) thedetection of watermarks in different distortion environments. Forexample, if an embedded content is transmitted through a communicationchannel (or is subject to a particular type of distortion) that islikely to produce burst errors, a segment length in a particular range(e.g., 4≦n≦10) can be selected. In other examples, the potentialwatermark can be evaluated using some or all of possible segment lengths(e.g., 2≦n≦(watermark frame length/2)) in an iterative fashion in orderto select a segment length that produces the highest accumulated weight.

In many cases, multiple watermarks are embedded into the same content,each carrying a different payload. For example, a content maysimultaneously carry watermark messages intended for copy-control,content identification, identification of content owner, identificationof distributor and/or recipient, providing synchronized operations withexternal applications, and the like. In these cases, differentwatermarks may have different performance requirements regarding payloadsize, robustness, security, probability of false detections, processingload and other requirements. In these systems, each watermark messagecan often be independently embedded and extracted.

When multiple watermark messages are embedded in a content, extractionof one or both of the embedded watermark messages can be greatlyenhanced by extracting the watermark messages in a coordinated fashion.In particular, in some embodiments, distortion estimations that arecarried out for a first watermark message can be reused to facilitatethe extraction of a second watermark message that has differentperformance requirements than the first watermark message. Typically thewatermark message with a lower payload size, such as a copy-controlwatermark, can be more efficiently used to estimate content distortionthan a watermark message with a larger payload size, such as a contentidentification watermark, and/or a forensic watermark that is used todistinguish different copies of the content. For example, having awatermark message with a smaller payload can enable the use of morepowerful error correction capabilities. Further, watermark messages witha smaller footprint may be less susceptible to time/space varyingdistortions and can be embedded at greater numbers, thereby improvingthe robustness of watermark extraction. In addition, having a smallpayload can enable the use of more efficient search algorithms that arebased on template matching as opposed to error correction decodingprocedures. Therefore, in some embodiments, distortion estimations areconducted based on watermark messages with a smaller payload size, andthe results are used to conduct targeted extraction attempts forwatermark messages with a larger payload size.

According to some embodiments, when multiple watermark messages arepresent in a content, the extraction of the embedded watermarks isfurther improved by initiating the extraction of a watermarks with alarger payload (and lower robustness) only when a tentative watermarkwith a smaller payload is detected. This way, significant computationalsavings can be achieved since futile searches for the larger-payloadwatermark in an un-watermarked content is prevented. Further, even in amarked content, multiple searches over the distortion space for thelarger-payload watermark are eliminated. Having to conduct fewersearches also reduces the probability of false watermark detectionassociated with the larger-payload watermarks. Experiments conducted bythe inventors have revealed that, in some scenarios, linking the searchfor a larger-payload watermark message to the detection of a conclusivelower-payload watermark message produces negligible improvement inwatermark extraction efficiency and false positive rates, but cansignificantly reduce the robustness of larger-payload watermarkmessages. That is, extraction of the larger-payload watermark messagesis not triggered often enough and, as a result, ample opportunities forthe detection of the larger-payload watermarks are wasted. Therefore, asnoted earlier, triggering the larger-payload watermark message based onthe detection of a tentative smaller-payload watermark message improvesthe efficiency and processing load of the extraction operations, whileproviding a reasonably robust detection results for the larger-payloadwatermark messages.

It is understood that the various embodiments of the present disclosuremay be implemented individually, or collectively, in devices comprisedof various hardware and/or software modules and components. Indescribing the disclosed embodiments, sometimes separate components havebeen illustrated as being configured to carry out one or moreoperations. It is understood, however, that two or more of suchcomponents can be combined together and/or each component may comprisesub-components that are not depicted. Further, the operations that aredescribed in various figures of the present application are presented ina particular sequential order in order to facilitate the understandingof the underlying concepts. It is understood, however, that suchoperations may be conducted in a different sequential order, andfurther, additional or fewer steps may be used to carry out the variousdisclosed operations.

In some examples, the devices that are described in the presentapplication can comprise a processor, a memory unit, an interface thatare communicatively connected to each other, and may range from desktopand/or laptop computers, to consumer electronic devices such as mediaplayers, mobile devices and the like. For example, FIG. 16 illustrates ablock diagram of a device 1600 within which various disclosedembodiments may be implemented. The device 1600 comprises at least oneprocessor 1602 and/or controller, at least one memory 1604 unit that isin communication with the processor 1602, and at least one communicationunit 1606 that enables the exchange of data and information, directly orindirectly, through the communication link 1608 with other entities,devices, databases and networks. The communication unit 1606 may providewired and/or wireless communication capabilities in accordance with oneor more communication protocols, and therefore it may comprise theproper transmitter/receiver antennas, circuitry and ports, as well asthe encoding/decoding capabilities that may be necessary for propertransmission and/or reception of data and other information. Theexemplary device 1600 that is depicted in FIG. 16 may be integrated intoas part of a content handling device, a watermark embedding and/orextraction device

Various embodiments described herein are described in the generalcontext of methods or processes, which may be implemented in oneembodiment by a computer program product, embodied in acomputer-readable medium, including computer-executable instructions,such as program code, executed by computers in networked environments. Acomputer-readable medium may include removable and non-removable storagedevices including, but not limited to, Read Only Memory (ROM), RandomAccess Memory (RAM), compact discs (CDs), digital versatile discs (DVD),Blu-ray Discs, etc. Therefore, the computer-readable media described inthe present application include non-transitory storage media. Generally,program modules may include routines, programs, objects, components,data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implementparticular abstract data types. Computer-executable instructions,associated data structures, and program modules represent examples ofprogram code for executing steps of the methods disclosed herein. Theparticular sequence of such executable instructions or associated datastructures represents examples of corresponding acts for implementingthe functions described in such steps or processes. A content that isembedded with watermarks in accordance with the disclosed embodimentsmay be stored on a storage medium. In some embodiments, such a storedcontent that includes one or more imperceptibly embedded watermarks,when accessed by a content handling device (e.g., a software or hardwaremedia player) that is equipped with a watermark extractor, can trigger awatermark extraction process, the associated signal processingoperations, as well as subsequent operations by the watermark extractorand/or the content handling device that are disclosed in the presentapplication.

The foregoing description of embodiments has been presented for purposesof illustration and description. The foregoing description is notintended to be exhaustive or to limit embodiments of the presentinvention to the precise form disclosed, and modifications andvariations are possible in light of the above teachings or may beacquired from practice of various embodiments. The embodiments discussedherein were chosen and described in order to explain the principles andthe nature of various embodiments and its practical application toenable one skilled in the art to utilize the present invention invarious embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to theparticular use contemplated. The features of the embodiments describedherein may be combined in all possible combinations of methods,apparatus, modules, systems, and computer program products.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, comprising extracting a plurality oftentative watermarks from an embedded host content, each tentativewatermark representing a candidate watermark with an associatedprobability of false watermark detection that exceeds a desiredprobability of false watermark detection; obtaining estimated distortioninformation associated with one or more distortions present in theembedded host contents using at least two of the extracted tentativewatermarks; based on the estimated distortion information, obtaining oneor more pre-distorted watermark templates, each pre-distorted watermarktemplate representing a watermark that would be extracted from the hostcontent when a specific distortion or a specific combination distortionsis present in the host content; and re-evaluating at least one of theextracted tentative watermarks using the one or more pre-distortedwatermark templates.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the re-evaluatingresults in detection of a watermark with an improved probability offalse watermark detection compared to probability of false watermarkdetection associated with each of the extracted tentative watermarks. 3.The method of claim 1, wherein the re-evaluating results in detection ofa conclusive watermark with an associated probability of false watermarkdetection that is smaller than or equal to the desired probability offalse watermark detection.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein each of thepre-distorted watermark templates represents a particular type and aparticular amount of at least one type of distortion that cancontaminate the embedded host content.
 5. The method of claim 1, whereinthe re-evaluating results in an improved estimation of distortionspresent in the embedded host content.
 6. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: prior to obtaining one or more pre-distorted watermarktemplates, determining whether or not the estimated distortioninformation corresponds to a distortion amount that exceeds a particulardistortion threshold, wherein the one or more pre-distorted watermarktemplates are obtained only if the estimated distortion informationcorresponds to a distortion amount that does not exceed the particulardistortion threshold.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the estimateddistortion information is obtained using two or more synchronizationportions of the at least two extracted tentative watermarks.
 8. Themethod of claim 7, wherein the estimated distortion information isobtained by comparing a spacing between the at least two of theextracted tentative watermarks to a nominal spacing of watermarksassociated with an un-distorted content.
 9. The method of claim 1,wherein the extracting of each of the tentative watermarks comprisesdetecting a synchronization portion of the tentative watermark thattriggers extraction of a packet portion of the tentative watermark. 10.A device, comprising an extractor configured to extract a plurality oftentative watermarks from an embedded host content, each tentativewatermark representing a candidate watermark with an associatedprobability of false watermark detection that exceeds a desiredprobability of false watermark detection; a distortion estimatorconfigured to obtain estimated distortion information associated withone or more distortions present in the embedded host contents using atleast two of the extracted tentative watermarks and to obtain one ormore pre-distorted watermark templates, each pre-distorted watermarktemplate representing a watermark that would be extracted from the hostcontent when a specific distortion or a specific combination distortionsis present in the host content; and an evaluator configured tore-evaluate at least one of the extracted tentative watermarks using theone or more pre-distorted watermark templates.
 11. The device of claim10, wherein re-evaluation of the at least one of the extracted tentativewatermarks results in detection of a watermark with an improvedprobability of false watermark detection compared to probability offalse watermark detection associated with each of the extractedtentative watermarks.
 12. The device of claim 10, wherein re-evaluationof the at least one of the extracted tentative watermarks results indetection of a conclusive watermark with an associated probability offalse watermark detection that is smaller than or equal to the desiredprobability of false watermark detection.
 13. The device of claim 10,wherein each of the pre-distorted watermark templates represents aparticular type and a particular amount of at least one type ofdistortion that can contaminate the embedded host content.
 14. Thedevice of claim 10, wherein re-evaluation of the at least one of theextracted tentative watermarks results in an improved estimation ofdistortions present in the embedded host content.
 15. The device ofclaim 10, wherein the distortion estimator is configured to determinewhether or not the estimated distortion information corresponds to adistortion amount that exceeds a particular distortion threshold and toobtain the one or more pre-distorted watermark templates only if theestimated distortion information corresponds to a distortion amount thatdoes not exceed the particular distortion threshold.
 16. The device ofclaim 10, wherein the distortion estimator is configured to obtain theestimated distortion information using two or more synchronizationportions of the at least two extracted tentative watermarks.
 17. Thedevice of claim 16, wherein the distortion estimator is configured toobtain the estimated distortion information by comparing a spacingbetween the at least two of the extracted tentative watermarks to anominal spacing of watermarks associated with an un-distorted content.18. The device of claim 10, wherein the extractor is configured toextract each of the tentative watermarks by, at least in-part, detectinga synchronization portion of the tentative watermark and then extractinga packet portion of the tentative watermark.
 19. A device, comprising: aprocessor; and a memory comprising processor executable code, theprocessor executable code, when executed by the processor, configuresthe device to: extract a plurality of tentative watermarks from anembedded host content, each tentative watermark representing a candidatewatermark with an associated probability of false watermark detectionthat exceeds a desired probability of false watermark detection; obtainestimated distortion information associated with one or more distortionspresent in the embedded host contents using at least two of theextracted tentative watermarks; based on the estimated distortioninformation, obtain one or more pre-distorted watermark templates, eachpre-distorted watermark template representing a watermark that would beextracted from the host content when a specific distortion or a specificcombination distortions is present in the host content; and re-evaluateat least one of the extracted tentative watermarks using the one or morepre-distorted watermark templates.
 20. A computer program product,embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising:program code for extracting a plurality of tentative watermarks from anembedded host content, each tentative watermark representing a candidatewatermark with an associated probability of false watermark detectionthat exceeds a desired probability of false watermark detection; programcode for obtaining estimated distortion information associated with oneor more distortions present in the embedded host contents using at leasttwo of the extracted tentative watermarks; program code for, based onthe estimated distortion information, obtaining one or morepre-distorted watermark templates, each pre-distorted watermark templaterepresenting a watermark that would be extracted from the host contentwhen a specific distortion or a specific combination distortions ispresent in the host content; and program code for re-evaluating at leastone of the extracted tentative watermarks using the one or morepre-distorted watermark templates.